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Far Side
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Other Books in The Far Side Series
The Far Side

Beyond The Far Side
In Search of The Far Side
Bride of The Far Side
Valley of The Far Side
It Came From The Far Side
Hound of The Far Side

The Far Side Observer
Night of the Crash-Test Dummies
Wildlife Preserves
Anthologies
The Far Side Gallery
The Far Side Gallery 2
The Far Side Gallery 3
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The Far
A iOltlk AiMMveirsciiry Jhxmlbilt
iby trary JLairsoe
Andrews and McMeel

A Universal Press Syndicate Company
Kansas City • New York
The PreHistory of The Far Side: A 10th Anniversary Exhibit copyright
© 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984 by the Chronicle Publishing Company;
copyright © 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989 by Universal Press
Syndicate. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of reprints in the context of
Andrews and McMeel, a Universal Press
reviews. For information write
Syndicate Company, 4900 Main Street, Kansas City, Missouri 64112.
ISBN: 0-8362-1861-2 (hd)

0-8362-1851-5 (ppb)
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-84815 (hd)

89-84813 (ppb)
Cartoons on pages 26 and 27 copyright ©1976 by Pacific Northwest

Magazine. Reprinted by permission. Cartoons on pages 28-33 copyright
© 1979 by Seattle Times. Reprinted by permission.
Tragedy when I cut my finger.
is
Comedy is when you walk into an

open sewer and die.
—Mel Brooks
\
Contents
Foreword
Part 1: Origin of the Species 11
The Fossil Record 13
Part 2: Evolution 39
Creative Process 41
Sketchbook Sampler 100
Stories 113
Part 3: Mutations 119
Mistakes (Mine and Theirs) 121
Subtle Things 134
Part 4: Stimulus-Response 153
Public Response 155
Rejected Cartoons 172
Part 5: The Exhibit 185

FOREWORD
n this, the tenth anniversary of drawing The Far Side, I thought it might
be time to reveal some of the background, anecdotes, foibles, and
"behind-the-scenes" experiences related to this cartoon panel. (This may or may
not be of particular interest to anyone, but my therapist says it should do me a lot
of good.)
What the reader will fmd herein is a chronicle of The Far Side's birth and
evolution, complete with examples of various mutations (i.e., confusing or
controversial cartoons) and annotations along the way of comments from either
readers or myself. Via my sketchbooks, I've also included a glimpse (you
wouldn't want to look closer) into the way my mind works in coming up with and
developing cartoon ideas.
Finally, this book contains an "exhibit" of my personal favorite cartoons from
The Far Side on January 1, 1980. Keeping in that vein,
series since its inception
I've not intended this section to be so much a "walk down memory lane" as I have
an assemblage of The Far Side cartoons that I feel best reflect something of my
own perspective on humor and life (whatever the hell that means).
But, first, a warning: Some of the material contained in these pages is not for
the humoristically squeamish. your refrigerator is currently covered with
If
Family Circus or Nancy cartoons, it is suggested that you put this book down now.
—
Many of these cartoons are ones my editors refused to run others are ones I wish
they hadn't. Either way, most people (with the exception of maybe a couple guys
on Death Row) are bound to utter "Oh, my God" at least a few times during the
course of this book.
The PreHistory of The Far Side is, among other things, an examination of
what went wrong, what went right, and how rarely any two people seem to agree
on which is which. (You can decide for yourself.)
As for the people who absolutely hate The Far Side, I have one thing to say:
Your mother is a cow.
v
Qirigki <o| like Speoe
N
\ V
This was the house I grew up in. That's obviously my parents on the left and that's me looking
out of my upstairs bedroom.
14
/ made many drawings from this perspective. Apparently, it was the everyday view from my
bedroom window.
15
Dinnertime in the Larson household. We were one of those close-knit families that considered
the dinner hour an important aspect offamily life.
16
My older brother and I used to play a lot of games together.
17
;«r
/ loved Halloween as a kid. My parents loved it, and always insisted I be the same monster
too,
every year—something they called the "black ghost. " What I've evidently drawn here is that
very moment when the "black ghost" is ushered out the door to once again roam the streets and
terrorize the neighborhood.
18
/ remember quite fondly the play with me when I was growing up;
games my mother used to
such as one of my favorites (shown here) where she'd hide cookies from me and then give hints
where I might find them.
19
/ vividlyremember playing with my dad and the dog in the backyard. The dog, as I recall, was
not very fond of me.
20
In fact, this and other drawings like it are
the only memories I have of our dog.
My dad used to love to make kids laugh. At the zoo, especially, he would sometimes incorporate
my help to entertain whatever children were hanging around. I guess he wanted me to be popular.
22
My mom said that as soon as I'd get back from the zoo I'd run to my paper and crayons to try
and draw whatever animals I saw that day. Drawings like this one represent some of my earliest
impressions of wild creatures.
23
•
P±l
'
'
Jrki
I believe this is my earliest memory of riding in the car when my family took our annual vacation.
24
One day, a long, long time ago at a retail music store where I had been
working for almost a year, had an unexpected revelation. As I stood next to the
I
cash register, the sky seemed to suddenly open up over my head and a throng of
beautiful angels came flying down and swirled around me. In glorious, lilting
tones, their voices rang out, "you haaaaate your job, you haaaaate your job...."
—
And then they left. But I knew it was true angels don't lie. I hated my job.
There was nothing really that terrible about it but, without prior warning, it
came over me that this just wasn't what I wanted out of life. (We didn't even get
good employee discounts.) I wanted something more. Insurance salesman, ice
—
cream vendor, gravedigger many things occurred to me, but I was pretty much
rudderless.
So I took a couple days went home, and thought about it. Of course,
off,
thinking about a career crisis for two whole days was more than my attention span
could handle (a clue to why I do a single-panel cartoon instead of a strip), so I sat
down at the kitchen table and started to draw. Exactly why, I'll never know. Other
than an interest in Mad magazine during my adolescence, and an appreciation for
Gahan Wilson's work in Playboy, I knew nothing about the cartooning world.
But, on the other hand, cartooning is not exactly a field that requires a graduate
degree, complete with upper division courses like "Noses 401" and "Crossed Eyes
502."
I gave it drew a half-dozen cartoons. The net result was six of the
a whirl and
worst little drawings cartoondom has ever seen. Baring my soul, here are five of
the original six cartoons. (I couldn't find the sixth.)
25
VPP '-
YCf
Car? Larson
N-JpT
S"
i-eg^^0 to*
Yes... They're qu»Ve Strange durfng "the.

larval stage."
26
METAMORPHOSIS
fiWWI
27
The following took these six little "gems" to a local magazine in
day, I
Seattle called Pacific Search (now Pacific Northwest) and, amazingly enough, I
hit paydirt. The editor liked them, and received a ninety-dollar check.
I
Immediately, I was surrounded by angels singing, "You looooove cartooning, you

looooove cartooning...."
I quit my
music store job and began drawing, living off a combination of a
little money I had saved and my parent's gift of free room and board. And things
started off great. I worked up a little creation called Nature's Way, a single-panel
cartoon probably best described as a Mesozoic Far Side, and summed up the
courage to show it to the editor of a small, weekly newspaper (the Sumner News
Review). He liked it and began publishing it on a regular basis.
The sheer excitement of being published was enough to live on for a while,
but the three bucks a cartoon I was getting began to have a sobering effect on my
vision of doing this professionally. I'm not sure if it was the fear of rejection or
what, but I effectively avoided knocking on other doors or submitting my work to
various publishers. Eventually, I hung cartooning up and went out and got a "real"
—
job an investigator for the local Humane Society, to whom I never disclosed the
fact that on the way to the job interview I ran over a dog.
Things went along for a while about as close to normal as my life had ever
seemed and then, in 1979, a reporter I had met showed my cartoons to her editor
at the Seattle Times. Nature's Way
was resurrected and began appearing
weekly in their Saturday edition —next
to a kid's crossword puzzle called
"Junior Jumble" (a hint that trouble
was ahead). Some examples of these
cartoons follow:
28
.
»<»(F<r wp 1
X yst c\car&\.-. s & don't go

dcagQ'm anv sUe \c\ Yveve!"
"Egad! What a hideous creature!'
^_ ce eue
1
. i \\)<f
'
': e been t p o têcl
29
I Kate ib do "ttv.e, \b you rats oul
,
yxi give me no cKoice.
« O
Coars-e. of man'. X ca\\ \\ — V\axnmcr aryd CVvseW.
JO
ordered J
"Hey! What is this? I distinctly I'rA SOrry.. . "fry fhe. Vl>2&xA Uf "Hv«. TOoA.
the steak sandwich."
"Bring back his ear. '"Last one out's a rotten egg!"
31
I don't think we're dealing here with
your everyday locust swarm."
Say, FraivK. You don't happen "to s\ecp

w.tK a "Teddy bear, do^ya?" f course X ^cvex- ca+ +ê sV\e\\s.
32
ii
While working on Nature's Way, drew a handful of cartoons that common sense
I
dictated I never show anyone. If you think these are either sick or bizarre, you
should have seen the ones I left out. (No, you shouldn't have.)
By God, Bavr\a.by-' Movv tWere. aocs one. bia p'lqeorv'"
34
35
After almost a year of this experience, with my confidence level high (I was
back up to fifteen dollars per cartoon), I laid out a daring plan to expand this
"publication empire": on my one week's vacation from the Humane Society I
would take my portfolio and drive to San Francisco. With luck, I thought I had a
chance at hooking up with another newspaper or magazine, thereby increasing my
cartooning wages to, say, thirty bucks a week. But, all in all, the prime motivator
was a shot at one simple goal: earning a living at something I enjoyed.
And so, in the summer of 1979, I jumped into my Plymouth Duster and
headed south. I had with me a list of various publishers and their respective
addresses, which I had gotten from the library, and into the "city by the bay" I
drove.
My first target was the San Francisco Chronicle, primarily because I became
lost in the cityand found myself on Market Street, one of the names I recognized
from my list. I found the building, parked the car, walked into the lobby with
portfolio in hand, and came across a security guard who stopped me cold.
Stupidly, I'd made no appointment, and I had no idea whom I should see on the
subject of cartoons. I was a cartoonist for the Seattle
explained (lied) that I
Times, that I was in town just for the day, that I knew I was supposed to see
someone about my work but I couldn't remember who, and anything else that
came to mind. I guess I seemed convincingly more like a nerd than terrorist (who
would have been better prepared), so he made a phone call and sent me up to
another floor. And that's as far as I got. The receptionist politely told me that the
cartoon editor was unavailable today, but that, if I wished, I could leave my
portfolio with her and she would see that he would get it. As I handed it over, she
added the encouraging words that the newspaper rarely bought features from
"people who walked in off the street." I thanked her, left, and realized that I had
just made a very major mistake: I had given her my one and only copy of my
portfolio. It had completely escaped me that people might want to look at my
drawings at a time that was convenient for them, and not for me.
For the next two days, "portfolioless," I hung around a telephone booth at
Fisherman's Wharf. (I spent the night at the house of a friend who lived outside
the city.) Every two or three hours I would call the receptionist at the Chronicle
and inquire as to whether or not the cartoon editor had seen my work yet. The
answer was always "no," and I remember becoming paranoid that she was getting
progressively annoyed with me. Occasionally she would remind me "not to get
my hopes up." They weren't, lady, they weren't.
I was screwed. During the day I had no place to stay (insert violin music)
and I was very near the end of my vacation time. By the end of the second day of
waiting to hear from the Chronicle, I made the decision to leave for home.
I called the receptionist for the last time. No, the editor had still not looked
at my cartoons. Again, I thanked her, and headed for the Chronicle to retrieve my
portfolio or to make arrangements for someone to forward it home. Either way, I

was bummed, not so much because I realized what an idiot I was for trying such a
36
harebrained scheme, or for the comedy of errors I made along the way, but mostly
because I had just blown my one week's vacation time.
Before long, I was standing in front of the receptionist's desk for the second
time in as many days. I told her who I was (she knew), and she said she would
"ring Mr. Arnold." Obviously, I can't recall the exact details of the next events
(although I'm close), but what stands out most vividly in my memory was the look
of utter disbelief on this woman's face when she suddenly looked up at me and
said, "Mr. Arnold would like to speak with you!"
Frankly, it scared the hell out of me as well. I took the receiver from her, and
the voice at the other "Are you Gary Larson?" I replied in the
end said,
affirmative, and without hesitation, his next words were, "You're sick!" There was
a brief pause (during which my stomach rolled into a granny knot), and then he
quickly added, "I loved em!" Before we had said much more, he made a vague
comment about syndication and then, unexpectedly, he asked, "Are you in the
lobby?" I was in the lobby. "I'll come out and say hello. I'll be there in a couple
of minutes."
I hung up, and the next thing I saw was the receptionist staring fixedly at me.
She either asked or I told her that Mr. Arnold was coming out to the lobby. "He's
coming out?" she exclaimed, and her expression of either shock or horror left me
feeling like Fay Wray on the verge of a big meeting.
Stan Arnold was indeed a big man, but he was no Kong. He shook my hand
and asked me to join him for a few minutes in his office. I did, and we chatted
informally about cartoons and such for a while (my memory of this conversation
is hazy —
my brain was doing outside loops the whole time), and he ended up by
asking me if I would mind leaving my portfolio with him for a few days (didn't I
already do that?). He wanted to circulate it among some other editors. Finally, as
he walked me back to the lobby, he added that, should the Chronicle indeed
become interested in my work, one prospect would be syndication (something I
knew nothing about). He would be in touch.
Back in the lobby, having already said goodbye to Stan and waiting for the
elevator, I heard the sound of someone calling to me in a loud whisper. The
receptionist was discreetly trying to flag me down, and at her signal I walked back
to her desk. "I just wanted you to know that Mr. Arnold never comes out to the
lobby for things like this! I've worked here ten years and I've never seen him do
that! I just thought you'd like to know that he must think your work is very good."
(Insert theme song from Rocky here.)

Man, my adrenal glands went into warp speed. I'm just lucky not to have
been hit by a car as I walked out of the building. Of course, I didn't know what
my chances were of any of this coming to fruition, but I sure felt a helluva lot
better than I did an hour before.
Two days later, still on Cloud Nine, I arrived back home and found a letter in
my mailbox from the Seattle Times. In essence, the brief message was a
cancellation notice for Nature's Way. In the letter, Jim King, the managing editor,
37
expressed his personal regret (he was always a fan) but explained that the cartoon
had been generating just too many complaints and the editorial consensus was to
terminate it. (I knew it shouldn't have been next to "Junior Jumble.")
The timing of all this has always fascinated me. As I stated earlier, I had
never been very aggressive about pushing my work
and my "in" with the initially
Seattle Times had been very motivational. I'll always be convinced that, had the
Times mailed that letter out a week earlier, I never would have made the trip to
San Francisco. The wind would definitely have gone out of my sails.
The next day I got a phone call from Stan Arnold. Chronicle Features, the
syndicate affiliate of the San Francisco Chronicle, had indeed decided to
syndicate my work and would be sending a contract to me shortly. In addition, he
said they had decided to call it The Far Side, if that was okay with me. It was
okay with me. (They could have called it "Revenge of the Zucchini People" for
all I cared.)
On January 1, 1980, a single-panel cartoon called The Far Side debuted in
the San Francisco Chronicle, and several months later, Chronicle Features began
officially offering it to other newspapers.
Two years later, Andrews and McMeel, the publishing arm of another
syndicate —Universal—brought out my first book, also called The Far Side. Very
much to my own and the collective shock of decent, Garfield-loving
surprise,
people everywhere, it became a successful publication. It seemed natural, then,
when my first contract expired in 1984, to move to Andrews and McMeel's parent
company Universal Press Syndicate.
That's the story. Of course, I don't know how interesting any of this really is,
but now you've got it in your brain cells so you're stuck with it.
38
.
JhvJuilmm.
CREATIVE PROCESS
"Where do you get your ideas?" has always been the question I'm most often
confronted with. ("Why do you get your ideas?" is a close second.) I've always
found the question interesting, because it seems to embody a belief that there
exists some secret, tangible place of origin for cartoon ideas. Every time I hear it,
I'm struck by this mental image where I see myself rummaging through my
grandparents' attic and coming across some old, musty trunk. Inside, I find this
equally old and elegant-looking book. I take it in my hands, blow away the dust,
and embossed on the front cover in large, gold script is the title, Five Thousand
and One Weird Cartoon Ideas.
I'm afraid the real answer is much more mundane: I don't know where my
ideas come from. I will admit, however, that one key ingredient is caffeine. I get
a couple cups of coffee into me
and weird things just start to happen.
The idea for any cartoon (my experience, anyway) is rarely spontaneous.
Good ideas usually evolve out of pretty lame ones, and vice versa. (I've destroyed
a few good cartoons by reworking them to death.) There's only one cartoon idea I
ever got that came directly from my own personal experience, and this is it:
41
And some of my cartoons (some would argue most), I realize, are not always
understandable. I mean, I know what I was going for — I just have to face the fact
that I don't always quite get there. "Off days" are a part of life, I guess, whether
you're a cartoonist, a neurosurgeon, or an air-traffic controller.
Nevertheless, I might be interesting (if not embarrassing) to
thought it
include a section in this book with excerpts from my sketchbook some that —
eventually became Far Side cartoons, and some miscellaneous doodles, short
stories, anecdotes, etc. I've also included some examples of problems I've
encountered in my efforts to publish my cartoons once they've been created.
Some cartoons spring forth from just staring stupidly at a blank sheet of
paper and thinking about aardvarks or toaster ovens or cemeteries or just about
anything, and others come out of "doodles" that I continually enter into a
sketchbook. On the following pages are some of these sketchbook "doodles" and
writings from my sketchbook. In some cases I've included the final rendition that
became a Far Side panel. Other things are just nonsensical, inane little drawings
that have no bearing on anything whatsoever, but for some unknown reason they
came out of me so here they are.
42
When an idea hits, it's important for me to write it
down or sketch it as quickly as possible. (I've lost more
than one cartoon idea because I thought I could
remember it later.) Leafing through my sketchbook, I
was surprised to find this Doberman "gun" idea which
sparked the "Dobie-o-matic" cartoon.
Suddenly the burglars found themselves looking down the
barrel of Andy's Dobie-o-matic.
43
"V^.
fccenx *^ c^ck^ out.. . \>vd? vY\a^£< T

<d<x* a*i kv* ^~ "^^ /^^ kxx^^jL^V
7~f
/decided the caption on the first draft was just too

graphic and unsettling (although it's what deer hunters
do, isn't it?), and I modified it in the final version.
"I'm sorry, ma'am, but his license does check out and, after all,
your husband was in season. Remember, just because he
knocks doesn't mean you have to let him in."
44
.
norway rats...2£
Thumper
SPECIAL &_
PI6LET5 IN
A BLANKET. ...35-
/
HAMSTEROTES-../^
HAMSTERETTES
THE THUMPER SPECIAL.. 6
NORWAY RATS
SmaH _
"
;?$£
N\ed .
""_"
m ^^
'"$9
Jur^Vjo _"
'
Pythons PL£T£ ^S
CTKe works"
The first version of this (upper) seemed just a tad

grotesque, and I ended up eliminating the pig being
swallowed. (On another note, I'm not exactly sure how
these snakes are holding up their newspapers.)
Down at the Eat and Slither
45
3^ f^z ^.7W
/ have absolutely no idea what the little doodle above

means or where it came from, but it led to this Far Side.
(And now I know where the latter came from, but I still
don't know what it means.)
Scene from Return of the Nose of Dr. Verlucci
46
So poS'*** Jtr\k.Yis..
1983
What kind of a sordid, bizarre past a scientist and some

duck could possibly have is for anyone to surmise, but I
enjoyed the drama in suggesting that, once again, their

lives have become entangled and a new chapter is
about to be written. Personally, I enjoy cartoons of this
r
&X a*4*0^7 type because they lack the obvious "cymbal crash" at
the end of the punch line. The idea evolved as shown.
"So, Professor Jenkins! . . . My old nemesis! ... We meet again,
but this time the advantage is mine! Ha! Ha! Ha!"
47
Tm I eav'i^ yot^ Worry . . . and I'm
Above is my first version

of this idea, but this is one of
those rare instances when even 1 found something sort
of repugnant in the drawing. The grubs (right) just
seemed more palatable (not in the edible sense).
Tm leaving you, Charles and I'm taking the
. . .
grubs with me."
48
A^
V^^'
*
ok
t
«fr > U^ 3/ j ^ ^.^ ^
-w
M /,
For me, the caption (if there is one) and the drawing
i are a simultaneous concept. In this case, however, I
y^f/WrS knew these bears would be pretty excited about their
"find" but it took some time to decide how best to
** express it.
"Think about it, Murray. ... If we could get this baby runnin',
we could run over hikers, pick up females, chase down mule
deer — man, we'd be the grizzlies from hell."
49
/Aomvhi>\ «5us»^S3>n\ev\
about mountain men and the wild

I just started thinking
frontier and Jeremiah Johnson and before long out
came Seymour.
Seymour Frishberg: Accountant of the Wild Frontier
50
T
Nttd ik&ks ^WftyS Wh 4V projfcfo,
Sometimes I feel rough sketches I do of certain

like the
cartoons capture something more interesting than the
ones that are worked up. The crude but loose feeling in
the quick sketch of this cartoon is, to my eye, more
successful than the final.
Shark nerds always ran the projector.
51
The deer, I think, is any one of us caught in the
situation where some maniac, having entered our
home, is trying to hunt us down and kill us. (Pleasant
thought — / wonder if Ernie Bushmiller ever worked
with this theme in Nancy.) I started with the "horrible
movie" idea but decided it didn't make much sense
compared to the deer simply trying to collect himself.
52
"health
Yd>\^ Sêeh:
/ started thinking about faith healers one day and how

much obvious humor potential just exuded from these
people. I played with these two versions before ending
up with the final, as shown.
Appliance healers
53
/« f/j/s cartoon, I tried to tap into that universal fear I
think we all have of being blatantly unprepared for
some important, purposeful gathering like those dreams
of going to school or work in just your underwear. But
to forget your duck, of course, means you're really
^VZ^x^tf-v-t— 1984
screwed.
Suddenly, Professor Liebowitz realizes he has come to the
seminar without his duck.
54
This idea didn't change much between the sketch and
the final drawing, except I decided the attorney in this
case was definitely an idiot, not a nerd. (These are
important considerations.)
I once referred to a character in one of my cartoons
as a "dork" (a popular insult when I was growing up),
but my editor called me up and said that "dork"
couldn't be used because it meant "penis." I couldn't
believe it. I ran to my New Dictionary of American
Slang and, sure enough, he was right. All those years
of saying or being called a "dork" and I had never
really known what it meant. What a nerd.
"Well, of course I did it in cold blood, you idiot! . . . I'm
a reptile!"
55
Iwas playing around with the caption on this cartoon
before it suddenly dawned on me that it really didn't
need one. The story's told by just the scene of a legless
cat in a store with a piranha residing nearby in a
fishbowl. I also decided to put wooden legs on the cat
in the final version, not wanting to make cat fanciers
more upset than necessary.
Aquarists, however, loved it.
56
MJo>^^4K W WpkIV^
The idea came in up above and came out on the bottom

cartoon.
"I don't know if this is such a wise thing to do, George."
57
shown
The original and unpublished version of this is
on the top. I'm unclear as to why I changed it.
Looking at it now, I may have made the wrong
decision.
Naaaaaah.
58
—
My brother once woke up screaming in the middle of

the night from a nightmare. In his dream, a wolf with
"pure, white eyes" and walking on its hind legs, was
trying to get him. He was able to quickly dismiss the
ordeal, but he told the story so vividly that his younger
sibling (me) could never shake the image. Ironically,
my brother's nightmare ended up scaring me for years.
The creature on the right in this cartoon closely
resembles the "wolf as I've always pictured it.
In bed at night, I was so scared of this and other
monsters that I nearly suffocated trying to stay
completely under the blankets. Any exposed skin meant
certain death.
The monster snorkel would have been a wonderful
thing in my little world. (It still would be.)
The monster snorkel: Allows your child to breathe comfortably

without exposing vulnerable parts to an attack.
Originally, the title I intended for this cartoon was,

simply, "Predator/prey relationships. " But when I
finished the drawing, something about the way the wolf
was looking back over his shoulder evoked a need in
— — me to probe their relationship a little deeper.
Inevitably, their affair ended: Howard worried
what the pack would think,
excessively about
and Agnes simply ate the flowers.
59
Every time that I've seen a stuffed bear, it's posed in the
standard, threatening-like stance. I guess every bear
hunter would like to give the impression that this is
exactly how the animal was snuffed—seconds before he

(the hunter) was to be pulled into that terrible maw.
I think the truth is much more akin to what I've drawn
here.
A friend and I were walking across the zoo grounds one

day when another friend, an employee of the zoo,
began to scream at us from afar, "Riffraff in the zoo!
Riffraff in the zoo!"
Voila!
60
"
\l
;•
/ got luckyon this one. The first version seemed to be

exactly what I was looking for, and very little had to be
changed in the final. (I know most of those people
behind the glass.)
"Yes, they're gentlemen.
all fools, . But the question remains,
. .
'What kind of fools are they?'
61
Nicf *&i"*>&</$
"Nice threads" led to this cartoon. Or maybe it didn't.

I can't remember but if it had it would have been
interesting.
"You and Fred have such a lovely web, Edna — and I love
what you've done with those fly wings."
62
Oh -fKf J) e
^ P U5
IVoMfc
J* Vof
Apparently this was a little if dogs drove or commuted to

confusing to some people. I just meant
work on most likely hang their heads out the window. That's it. No
the bus or whatever, they'd
big deal. (I now think the whole thing would have been improved by changing the caption to,
"Dogs on their way to work." Oh, well.)
1988
- — :
J^//u2*_ fl^Sia-^tr To- UTdV^
63
A»\.
<fcv\.
/ /?ave «o uppermost sketch means. In

/Vfea vv/zaf f/je
fact, I can't say for sure if these cartoons were part of

the same creative process or not. So, I won't comment
about that —but I'd just like to say that these are some
of the fattest doctors I think I've drawn.
'OK, Wellington. I'm comfortable with my grip if you are .
Have you made a wish?"
64
instard)y vaporised ujh-et\ fv qrahs one o-f +>>2
C f eafw&> by -fhte K-eod ard shittw vigorous//.
—
The first version of this seemed, well wrong. I decided
the farmer had to be in the cartoon to make it a little
—
more understandable but it's a weird cartoon no
matter how you look at it.
Inadvertently, Roy dooms the entire earth to annihilation when,
in an attempt to be friendly, he seizes their leader by the head
and shakes vigorously.
65
Eons ago, shortly before a blind date, my dad gave me
the worst haircut of my life.At a time when longer hair
was cool, I ended up looking like a character on ajoin-
the-army poster.
This sketch and final cartoon are directly related to
that mortifying experience and indelible memory.
(Around last summer, I forgave my dad.)
'Oh, and here's Luanne now. . . . Bobby just got sheared
today, Luanne."
66
You Uue h> tor yw
\»»hfift
^ ?ô ^ 4
*" Uaf M VW Um
you/
^
u/W^ **<• l
t/6i*i l/fe.
of **£ !>
. ,
t^slfih tf*<^ 5ok\
of prefer the first sketch I made of this, but,

/ still sort
for one reason or another, I changed it to the bottom
version.
Unbeknownst to most historians, Einstein started down the
road of professional basketball before an ankle injury diverted
him into science.
67
I felt like the first version of this was actually better, in
the sense that, if the adult Grim Reaper carries a sickle,
then as a kid he must have carried scissors. I worried
about it for some reason and ended up changing it to
the bottom version.
The Grim Reaper as a child
68
After completing this cartoon, I realized one of the apes
had to be sucking an empty glass onto his face (as I
myself used to be quite good at), so it was necessary to
start over.
"Well, one guess which table wants another round
of banana daiquiris."
69
heath- >"< '••
/r hyzsa?'? difficult to go from the sketch above to the
final version. After all, I believe this is true.
How birds see the world.
70
^
I'vediscovered an interesting phenomenon. Once

you've drawn Rocky the Flying Squirrel, you can never
draw him again. In the final version, I must have drawn
and erased that miserable little rodent fifty times, and
he ultimately ended up looking like Rocky the Flying
Hamster.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, Miss Carlisle! . . . They're
only cartoon animals!"
71
Whenever and wherever my family gets together for a
big dinner, my mother (whose name is Doris) feels
compelled to pull out her camera and take the
quintessential shot of the Larsons about to bolt down
their meal.
Since wolves are such social animals, it was an easy
jump in my mind to go from a wolf-kill to a Larson
meal.
"For crying out loud, Doris. . . . You gotta drag that thing out
every time we all get together?"
A friend of minerelated a story of how she once

brought a boyfriend of hers to her parents' house for
dinner. Her father and her boyfriend (Edgar)
apparently didn't hit it off real well, and before the
evening was over, her father ended up saying to Edgar,
"You know what your problem is, don't you? Your
problem is you don't have a purpose/ Everyone has to
have a purpose in life, and you simply haven't found
one!"
Ihave no idea if the real Edgar ever found his
purpose or not, but if he did, this is how I imagined it.
Edgar finds his purpose.
72
y
cartoon cliche of someone (or, in my case,

/ /zate the
some animal) on a psychiatrist's couch. I'll do them,
obviously, but for some reason this situation always
points out the lunacy of mixing animal and human
behavior. If the psychiatrist was also a dog, I'd be
more comfortable with it. But the approach I've used
—
here makes me want to say, "Wait a minute dogs don't
visit psychiatrists! How'd he even find the right floor?"
Before long, I start analyzing the improbabilities in
everything I've drawn and I might end up having to lie
down oh the couch for a while.

"It's the mailman, Doc. He scares me
73
11
5; ! ^n w »* ^' k £T ^«*" s
;+'i V^t "to use a 1;Wt êwce. / //
M
UUU-f\ r s v^m^VVv.
"Vlx^.y. ]/
cartoon developed as shown, and I was satisfied

77i/.s
with the final —

except to say I'm always worried some
people will try to figure out what exactly it is that the
"Mr. Thingy" does. (I'm sure this is residual paranoia
from the "Cow tools" cartoon, see page 156.)
'Well, we've tried every device and you still won't talk
every device, that is, except this little baby we
simply call 'Mr. Thingy."
74
This idea, exactly as Ihad sketched it in the version
below, sat around for months before I actually tried it
out in The Far Side. It seemed to go over well, from
what I heard, but mostly with guys named "Doug."
<3S
The most loving, gregarious dogs seem to get down to
their basic instincts pretty fast when you reach for their
food bowl midmeal. (For a real thrill, try reaching for
it in slow motion. Dogs love the sensation that their
food is being stalked.)

I started playing with this tendency in dogs, and it
just sort of evolved into the grizzly bear cartoon seen at

left.
"Raised the ol' girl from a cub, I

did. . . . 'Course, we had to get
a few things straight between us. She don't try to follow me
into town anymore, and I don't try and take her food bowl
away 'til she's done."
75
The cartoon potential on the subject of spitting cobras
1987 J^=> rs-^z
is enormous. People have asked me if I ever worry
about running out of ideas for cartoons, but I think the

array of nature's creatures that sting, bite, spit, stab,
suck, gore, or stomp is just about endless. I never
worry.
N/l'ky
?(.n>r*j <r4'o <U>tf l«« Lî^h
The spitting cobras at home
Practical jokes of the wild
After completing this cartoon in the "deer" version, it
just didn't click with me, humorwise. I tried it again

with bears, and I suppose, because of their ability to
stand on their hind legs, they more closely approximate
a group of guys standing around doing the same
thing —
and, to my eye, making it more effective.
Practical jokes of the wild
76
Itseems to me that every time I watch a nature show
about lions, I hear something like this: "...and with
jaws that can crush the bones of a buffalo, the mother
lion gently lifts her little cub and carries it to blah blah
blah..."
I had to try to capture something of that phrase in a
cartoon.
"Oo, Sylvia! You've got to see this! Ginger's bringing Bobby

. . .
home, and even though her jaws can crush soup bones, Bobby
only gets a few nicks and scratches."
I've always been drawn to swamps and wetlands and

the things that live there. In those places, I find myself
mostly looking downward for frogs, fish, salamanders,
or whatever.
I think if I ever lived in feudal and stormed past
times
a castle gate, I'd have to check out the moat on the way
across.
I suppose I like this cartoon not only for the suggestion
that the usual crocodiles have been replaced with
goldfish, but because that's me yelling on the bridge.
"Oo! Goldfish, everyone' Goldfish!
77
I've lost track o/Mad magazine over the years, but as a
teenager I really enjoyed it. I think this Far Side
cartoon reflects a definite Mad influence.
"Fire!"
When I was a kid, it seemed to me that my dad was

constantly out in the garage working on some
mechanical project. was his gofer on these projects,
I
and I especially remember the pressure of being asked
to fetch him a specific-size crescent wrench.
In the corner of his shop was a huge, steel cabinet
with assorted drawers, one of which contained about
six thousand crescent wrenches. The sizes on these
grease-covered tools were sometimes difficult to read,
and it was always with an edge of trepidation that I
would hand him any wrench. My dad, however,
through some mystery of nature, always knew exactly
what size he needed for the job at hand. It only took
him a nanosecond to say, "Nope, that's not it."
I started thinking about those famous "bolts" in the
neck of Frankenstein's monster, and that in turn
sparked the memory of those stormy lightning-filled
nights when my dad, with his own little Igor, tried to
bring life to a dead lawnmower.
"Fool! This is an eleven-sixteenths ... I asked for

a five-eighths!"
78
A cartoon inspired by the memory of a classmate of
—
mine in junior high / think he's a senator now.
'Well, I've gotyour final grades ready, although I'm afraid not
everyone here will be moving up."
Sometimes, when you stay up too late at night trying to

think of something funny, these things happen. Except
to say that it's obviously inspired by "Ghost Riders in
what "Ghost Riders
the Sky," I haven't the slightest idea
in theKitchen" means. I'll figure it out one day. (I
should have followed up the next day with "Ghost
Riders in the Living Room.")
"Henry! Hurry or you're gonna miss it — ghost riders
in the kitchen!"
79
In hindsight, I wish I hadn't included the title to this
vampire cartoon. It's obviously redundant and only
distracted from the humor.
.onC <****•
;r
I'M
> N'
Channel 42 — your vampire station
rr)m»\we. V\\j>f\©V
Humor at its lowest form
80
"I built the forms around him just yesterday afternoon
when he fell asleep, and by early evening I was able
to mix and pour."
2/ Wrk £t>f 7^y'S
7
slû- /U* 4<^\ ~-%+faJL*+f
"Yeah. My boss don't appreciate me either. To him I'm just a
gofer. 'Igor! Go for brains! . . . Igor! Go for dead bodies . . . Igor!
Go for sandwiches!' ... I dunno — give me another beer."
81
Wf^ } *RuS*el - vju'i*H\
/
Another little "slice of life" scene. The rough sketch

evoked something in me (more successfully than the
final, I think) and I just ended up drawing it.
'Blow, Howie, blow! . . . Yeah, yeah, yeah! You're cookin now,
Howie! ... All right! . . . Charlie Parker, move over!. Yeah!"
. .
82
i
/changed my mind about the approach to this cartoon
and drew it instead from the perspective of the police.
And the only name
could think offor the handkerchief
I
was King Kong. There just aren't too many famous
monsters running around with first and last names.
"Take thishandkerchief back to the lab, Stevens. I want
some answers on which monster did this —
Godzilla! Gargantua! Who?"
83
This idea first centered around a snake taking a shower, its "robe" thrown on the bathroom floor.
That image, in turn, sparked the idea for a swimming hole scene, in which the respective worlds
of man and snake collide.
84
1983 C^f-torfTl
X \w;l| rv^flcl" primitru? t1\ c\a55.

-I will rNdtact
m^^
Something about the porcupine sketch above makes me

now prefer it to the final version, although I have no
idea why.
"Hors d'oeuvre?"
85
S
V koM *V V^r.s ^j^r/^ *~ ^^, 2^v*>, ^
k%
c~W</ fibdUfr**^ « C*"^r >J^N.ÂoiL '#*>» Tk>* ^V^txmZl,
/wsr afroM/ every f/me /Vc /?ear<i or read anything about

piranhas (as you might imagine, I'm drawn to the
subject), it's always mentioned how quickly a school of
them can skeletonize a cow. I'm not sure why a cow is
always the standard unit of measurement for this sort of
thing, but pondering it eventually led to this cartoon.
"Hold up, Niles. It says here, 'These little fish have been known
to skeletonize a cow in less than two minutes.'... Now there's
a vivid thought."
86
wmm.
"The gentlemen.
picture's pretty bleak, . The world's climates
. .
are changing, the mammals are taking over, and we all have a
brain about the size of a walnut."
87
/,'ur Strvi ^#u^ /whjL-j J o**&*h... fajf
I won't go once had a

into the bizarre details, but I
close call involving a rather largeBurmese python that
I had raised from a baby (the snake). By the time I
awakened to the fact that, instead of an interesting and
beautiful member of the reptile family, I was now living
with a gigantic predator with a very small brain (the
snake), one day she attempted to do me in. (I'm sure
that's how a lot of people would expect me to check out,
anyway.)
Before and after my own little episode, I've heard
stories of other people getting croaked in their
apartments by events you normally associate with the
jungle.
I got rid of the snake, and in so doing improved not
only my chances of living awhile longer but my social
life as well.
Tve seen this sort of thing before, Baxter,
and it's nor a pretty sight."
88
''OoooobU. Mr, Vfi* Horr\ {.. % c
Another example of perhaps overworking a cartoon. In

hindsight, I wish I had used the final drawing but with
the second caption in the sketch above, which begins,
"Raymond could feel it..." It just seems a little more
interesting to me.
In coming up with the name for the phobia, I played
around with words like "quackaphobia" and
"duckalookaphobia" and so on. But then I got the
bright idea to look up the scientific name for ducks, and
discovered their family name is Anatidae. And so, I
ended up coining a word that twelve ornithologists
understood and everyone else probably went, "Say
what?"
Anatidaephobia: The fear that somewhere, somehow, a duck
is watching you.
89
5")tff\ ^ySfo* U5
This is perhaps a good example of how I'll break a

mental block (other than getting out my contract and
rereading it). I scribbled out this strange little street
musician, hoping to get something happening. It
started me thinking about mimes, jugglers, and other

street performers —and the possibility of other
professions moving into the same scene.
Street physicians
90
,
/ don't think this ever really worked. The title on the

dog's book a well-known phrase, but I couldn't recall
is
any expressions that would similarly reflect a cat's

reading interests. In cases like this, I usually sit on the
idea with the hope that someday I'll stumble across it in
my sketchbook and immediately know how to handle it.
This time, unfortunately, I think I forced it.
1986
**<*
-/xrx<^7 ottXr... /lAW J) Ami Ju** /t^*j

r^'
'Mr. Bailey? There's a gentleman here who claims an ancestor

of yours once defiled his crypt, and now you're the last
remaining Bailey and ... oh, something about a curse.
Should I send him in?"
91
1987
My Oodâthu'. They're
like ootK.n* I've ever seen 1
<?ZVâ-crt^.
92
^* /
&*\y nmffi<4i\ (o\m O^hc^
"Oh! Four steps and then three to the

to the left right! . . . What
kind of a dance was / doing?"
93
/
/?
fAAis<\^ TÛo- .^d- 0«^- JZjjlaJz*ii d&y , O~o(r.

v\
Secret tools of the common crow
94
A strategy for survival used by some spiders is known
as "ballooning." Baby spiders crawl out on a leaf or
something and cast out a long, secreted thread that,
catching a breeze, carries them aloft to far and distant
lands. I started thinking about the phenomenon of
"ballooning" in spiders (someone has to) and I just sort
of doodled out a literal translation of its meaning.
Eventually, it occurred to me that, within the confines
of The Far Side, there may be other animals that
employ the same tactic. Why, bison, of course.
'
£»,*«** M»« h ,w i
More Facts of Nature: As part of nature's way to help spread

the species throughout their ecological niche, bison often
utilize a behavior naturalists have described as "ballooning."
\h(j)w\\nH 4(v \javy\pcovo'
Thwarting the vampcow V4rA(>rowu
95
1987
The seed for this cartoon all started with a simple T-

shirt design. If T-shirts were as popular in the
nineteenth century as they are today, I wondered what
kinds of things they would say. The sketch above led to
5Â-uxr-<
this cartoon. I
96
— -
When I was a kid, I often listened to my grandfather

sing a song that started off with the words, "Buffalo
Gal won't you come out tonight, come out tonight,
come out tonight [repeats]... and we'll dance by the
light of the moon."
I realize now that I never understood what a "Buffalo
Gal" was. My image was someone who looked a lot
like the woman in this cartoon.
It was inevitable, therefore, that she one day meet the
Elephant Man.
ll
^ %k^ ^ /^^_^#^ %**
The elephant man meets the buffalo gal.
It all started innocently enough. I hadn't thought much

about cows in my entire life. They were nice animals,
both on and off the dinner table. And that about sums
up my attitude toward them. And then it happened.
In May of 1980, 1 drew the cartoon at left. When I
finished, I sat back and stared at my little creation.
Something moved me. This was more than just a
—
cow this was an entire career / was looking at. As the
am \
—- — c —
-^^ L
following pages indicate, I should have just called this
thing The Cow Side and forgot about it.
"We've still got a couple of years to go before were ready for
the moon."
97
SKETCHBOOK SAMPLER
Late at night, as I'm working at my drafting table, mental fatigue starts to take
over. The problem is, it takes me awhile to figure out that this is happening. And
so I sometimes keep right on drawing until, eventually, I realize it's becoming
difficult to erase because of the proximity of my nose to the paper.
At those times I draw some pretty weird things in my sketchbook. I'm not
saying funny, I'm saying weird. These are things that I look at the next day and
wonder what in the hell I was thinking about. (As if I know at the other times.)
I'm not entirely sure of the wisdom in this, but I thought I'd take some of
these little cartoon "musings" and throw them in this book. Regardless of what
interpretations or reactions they may elicit, I can assure you they are entirely
meaningless. Anyone who attaches more significance to them needs to get out
more often.
100
70/
Aay&yayk iwsvift
>crrf -|f»vw Wn^lb Cov** Hxj
?nf a/ lêt/^
' Ww WAV.
702
5i?«H<r txj^s
DoMm ort ^V ^p^tf-paiW
A; Ha -toe W
705
104
Uj**^// V{ck
Y -C\;,\
s v,;^ j) *VJly
Q?us t*y> 4ktW«*<* GÂ" T&>d
Jews < sr<> -f»o^ \W ^n* u «-

Afy apologies world takes offense at this. I'm
if half the
not antireligious or anti-Christian (I'm a little cynical

about TV evangelists). I just can't help thinking about
things like this and what it would feel like to anybody
to get up after that long in the netherworld.
105
&4A&W* df iKt N^rcA
vv
Two veA- \e* *we ta»<v> Ac *h
706
,v
si.'W softy Ut-
0**vy " 4 w>fll* X <kii+'*C \>'\\i
a (of of v/€kov^ •
{,
/ was gowg to <io a cartoon that was a collage of various animals and their favorite sayings —but
I never did. I drew these four and got stuck.
/)uv\a £&Vr\W<f«
107
/ never submitted this as a Far Side cartoon
Maybe I should have.
7*t escM's
-hifhli*?
0vQ.r><?45> **J *^" be baa
in a rTumeo'f w^ * -fall
108
-JacHy
109
but lêytetf, Âov^
4K e Wis * r' W
^ |)W ciaiwk*' *)
no
MiJi cluJ\X«\ %
nJVVWit
111
/*
'K 'X
\
/v~
/v- ^D
'"r
/V
£_4£
A^^T Act*/ J<fi*4 tr&UfJ2o*r 4c*uca
112
STORIES
Sometimes ideas have come out of short stories or ramblings I write just to
shift gears once in a while. Cartoons are, after all, little stories themselves,
frozen at an interesting point in time. What follows are several stories that
either led to cartoons, could have led to cartoons, or were just ideas in and
of themselves.
PHILOSOPHY
book,
based on his
latest
"
sr
3S5S53=SS£»*»
1981
-M
'///>^fi///'
^*"
>>'
*''*** ,}>
/
A
Mind Over Matter...
113
'
THE CLASS PROJECT
^^S^^^^n ^^ 1
there as we
*tfiy#rt
1982
METAM *1
SBOV
30Z
^-^^Sr '- Hey!1

'
m
774
THEFRIE>GE
when suddenly
Of
^ day, We never
^ ^gûon.
lf/2^
TO^
o\\o\
'''
Tr^^ffthau""510
^SSteA^ ^ 1
"^
775
"
BOBBY
^n and caUed his parents.

1981
\ JÛ I
H-
• •
7
•âS^V^
of the
^ffi^^SSSF
776
ZOOLOGY
one day,
*e true
Mvears
several
years w
until,
„„ Carl lived
m
S^NaruWûnleasned.Carl
*,
the cave
< for
together ^ ate „„,.
^ WRONG NUMBER
^ He had no
friends and
most
God^„
God êd.
to
himself talking
"Sorry. Anu ^"
ALIENS
,v We êre sitting
around <£*££
open, and
«* door creaked
sn
^ taocu rerun
t0
swung it
** -J êntTof silence
-gtJS- * ^wêt &A saw the
aJ&^*Z22&SU?£2Z£*
Thetodveem
the door. ^ m
pum >
^bentonpro
.ecttn g
(
<wo rounds
p two
into
^
stood
twn ^
ope-^
vengeful _sne the doot smoke clearea.
look of the suddenly
Grandma he stree „
d Harold
H->d S^^^H-oWs^^s
,
outvered.
vl.ee
Gr
*ere
^ U
howt\dhave,thought7
Schmidt-astinkin'
alien'.
777
PALEONTOLOGY
advantage.
as taking full
They had jus.

the kids began
laid toW**^
to scream.
Wttlun onds
^^ ^
te «
once pe aceM
mws mc^
™ down m to the
{amily
from the week

before. — -
1988
W.
y>
40
sy
^*- v*"--
v**^~ •>•
/^<
^t-^ vtodt**"'_
vT/r-"'
\//'
118
.
13
MiuWlkwms. .
MISTAKES
(MINE AND THEIRS)
Nothing is perhaps more frustrating in this business than to open a newspaper,

turn to the comic page, glance nonchalantly at your own little creation and
discover that some behind-the-scenes idiot has screwed it all up.
No, strike that. Nothing is perhaps more frustrating in this business than to
open a newspaper, turn to your own little creation, and discover that some idiot
has screwed it all up, and discover that that idiot was you.
Between the time an idea for a cartoon gets conceived in my head and the
day it's actually published in any given newspaper, a lot can go awry. It might be
a basic flaw in the cartoon's premise, a word or two deleted by a typesetter, or the
entirely wrong caption set to the wrong cartoon.
Whatever, it's just so much fun when these things happen.
121
In of drawing The Far Side, I was scared to death of making
my first year or so
mistakes in the artwork. Incredibly, I had never heard of a product called "White
Out" (for covering up mistakes) and the smallest screw-up meant starting over.
So, as I've indicated under each of these cartoons, I sometimes left things out.
The fellow coming through

This is interesting. I have the door is incompletely
no idea where this guy's drawn because I feared the
legs are. lines of his body would
interfere with the
auditioner's head.
Obviously, I choked.
And this must be the little woman."
/hate drawing this type of rug because I can never

seem to make the concentric circles come out right. I'd
get halfway, as shown, and quit.
122
Sled Chickens of the North
"Sled Chickens of the North" was published with just

—
one minor flaw the chickens weren't harnessed to
anything. They're just running along, no "strings"
attached. Oh, well.
As a reader pointed out to me, bananas don't grow this

way. The individual bananas grow upward, not
downward (as I've drawn them here).
One side of me wants to say, "So sue me," but the
truth is, it does bug me when I make these kinds of
mistakes.
"That does it, Sid ... . You yell 'tarantula' one more time and
you're gonna be wearin' this thing."
123
Over the years,The Far Side has cultivated a following
among some scientists. And, of course, I've found that
—
especially flattering but it does have its downside. A
certain degree of accuracy is expected from these folks.
After this "polar bear" cartoon was published, I
received letters from several biologists reminding me
that polar bears are strictly an Arctic species, and
penguins strictly Antarctic. Damn.
"And now Edgar's gone .... Something's going on

around here."
And I really heard it when this "mosquito" cartoon

came out. Numerous readers wrote to remind me that
it's the female that does the biting, not the male. I knew
that. (Of course, it's perfectly acceptable that these
creatures wear clothes, live in houses, speak English,
etc.)
"What a day .... I must have spread malaria across
half the country."
124
"
c^Z-ucm
1982
Yeeeeeeeeeee!" " Yeeeeeeeeeeeha!
The Far Side starts off being drawn in a 6" x 7.5" size. In pencil, I rough in and then refine the
image until it fairly closely approximates what's in my head. (That's a scary thought.) Inking
and shading are my last steps. The caption is handwritten in pencil in the area where it would
normally appear. When the syndicate receives this original, the caption is set into its usual
typeface, the copyright and publication date are added, and the whole thing is reduced down to
the size normally seen in newspapers. Six of these " ready -to-go" cartoons are compiled into a
mailer representing one week's worth of material, and then shipped to newspaper clients a few
weeks in advance of their usage.
I receive the mailers as well, and the day this cartoon showed up I was horrified to see that the
last two letters in the caption had been deleted. Instead of "Yeeeeeeeeha," it read
"Yeeeeeeeeeee." Someone at the syndicate had screwed up.
Obviously, this small error had a significant impact on the feel of the cartoon. But I hadn't
been drawing The Far Side for very long, and I was nervous about calling up my editor and
complaining. Correcting the caption required sending out a special mailing to the client
newspapers (all twelve of them) and I knew it would involve time and added expense. Plus, I
didn't want equated cartooning with a cure for cancer.
to give the impression that I
On the phone, I explained to my editor what had happened, and he got out his copy of the
cartoon and looked at it. After a few seconds, he told me he really didn't think the cartoon had
—
been affected that much by the change. Inside, I died but I apologized for bothering him and
said goodbye. I sat therefor a while, looking at the cartoon, and suddenly I realized that, with
the caption mistake, it might be interpreted that it's the people doing the yelling, not the aliens.
It was getting worse in my mind. A few minutes later, curing cancer meant nothing compared to
getting this caption right.

I called my editor back and tried convince him that the cartoon had been
once again to
mortally wounded by the caption error. This time he agreed, and cheerfully offered to send out
corrected versions to the various newspapers. My relief was overwhelming.
Now, I have to admit that I don't know how interesting this little anecdote is to anyone, but it
was definitely a significant event in my cartooning life, because, over the years, lots of mistakes
and last-minute changes on both sides of the fence were to take place. And this experience with
the "alien" cartoon inspired me to always "negotiate" on various complications whenever they
happened.
125
"You know, I thought I heard something squeak." 'Well, what the? ... I thought I smelled something."
/ opened newspaper one day, and The Far Side on the left is what I saw. The version I
the
submitted, however, is on the right. As you can see, there's a subtle difference.
Normally, when a syndicate editor feels compelled to alter a caption, he or she contacts the
cartoonist and the changes are discussed. No one contacted me about this one, however, and I
cringed when I read the new, wimpy caption. In cases like this, I prefer cartoons be rejected
altogether rather than "softened" in their impact.
My editor only did this a few times, and, when the cartoon came up for inclusion in a book, I
had the original caption reinstated.
126
.
"Lucky thing I learned to make peanut butter "Oh, brother! . . . Not hamsters again!"
samwiches or we woulda starved to death by now."
The Far Side and Dennis the Menace used to be side by side in the Dayton Daily News. One
day, back in August of 1981 someone "accidentally" switched their captions. What's most
,
embarrassing about this is how immensely improved both cartoons turned out to be.
ge Chronicle Features. 1983 c5î/V*«-tfK_-'
"If I get as big as Dad, won't my skin be too "I see your little, petrified skull labeled and
TIGHT?" resting on a shelf somewhere."
Not long after, it happened again. The Far Side's new caption is just sort of nonsensical, but I
think Dennis the Menace turned out rather interesting.
127
1981 ,
"Hey!... You kids!' "Hey! ... You kids! Can't you read?"
The submitted version of this cartoon is seen here on the left. My editor, however, believed
something more was needed to clarify why this guy coming out of the house is so mad so he —
changed the caption to the version on the right. I acquiesced on this one, but always felt like it
was redundant and too leading. I later restored my preferred version for inclusion in a book.
128
. .
"Well, you've got quite an infestation here, ma'am ... I can't "Eeeny-ooony wanah! Eeeny-ooony wanah
. . .
promise anything, but I imagine I can knock out some Eeeny-ooony wanah ..."
of the bigger nests."
A few years ago, the Citizen- Journal in Columbus,

Ohio, made a slight mistake regarding which Far Side
caption went with which cartoon.
The caption for the "slug" cartoon, depicting a mass
of slugs worshiping their "god" and chanting some
nonsensical intonation, was repeated the following day
with the "tree house" cartoon. Instead of the version
shown in the upper left corner, what Columbus readers
saw was the cartoon at left.
And how many letters did I have forwarded to me
asking for an explanation? Don't ask.
'Eeeny-ooony wanah! Eeeny-ooony wanah
. . . .
Eeeny-ooony wanah ..."
129
"A Louie, Louie . . . wowoooo ... We gotta go now ..." m sirring in the rain
In a Danish book version of The Far Side, the caption on this cartoon was changed from "Louie,
Louie" to "Singing in the Rain."
My only guess as to why they did this was that "Louie, Louie" was more a national hit than
international and the song just didn't register with the Danes.
And, for all intents and purposes, "Singing in the Rain" is pretty funny.
130
"That was incredible. No fur, claws, horns, antlers, or nothin'. . . . Just soft and pink."
The clear intention of this cartoon was to imply that, for large carnivores, eating human beings
—
must be our equivalent of eating Spam nothing too difficult about it.
A greeting card based on this cartoon was later produced, and the copy written on the inside
(by a staff writer) said, "Thinking of you."
Obviously, this addition gave the cartoon a whole new twist —one which I must have
unwittingly approved.
131
1982
&zm&r\
2 qofia &e me fl
My publisher's gift and stationery division decided one day they wanted to make this and a few
other Far Side cartoons into posters. The problem was this one particular cartoon featured
nothing but penguins and ice, which didn't lend itself to color.
When the finished posters showed up, I was interested to see they had indeed found a use for
—
color in this cartoon they made the one penguin (who's singing "I Gotta Be Me") yellow — the
others remained black and white.
In other words, the entire point of the cartoon had been reversed. In the original version, I
was being cynical about the futility of trying to be unique in a sea of commonality. But by
making just the singing penguin yellow, the publisher made him stand out, and the cartoon then
made the same point the song originally intended.
At least that's what I feared. I was really worried someone might actually think I was being
sensitive for a moment. That would make me sick.
132
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"Mr. Cummings? This is Frank Dunham in production. ... "Mr. Cummings? This is Frank Dunham in Production ....
We've got some problems, Mr. Cummings. Machine No. We've got some problems. Machine No. 5 has jammed, several
5 has Jammed, several of the larger spools have gone off
of the larger spools have gone off track, the generator's blown,
track, the generator's blown, ana, well, everything seems
to be you-know-what" and, well, everything seems to be you-know-what."
In my hometown, The Far Side is carried by the Seattle Times, which "crops" the cartoon so that
it fits a little better on their comic page.
On the day this cartoon was published, friends started calling me for an explanation as to its
meaning. I hadn't seen the cartoon myself (other than when I had drawn and submitted it weeks
before) and the conversations sort of went in circles before I got a few clues that something was
amiss.
Iopened the newspaper to the comic section and discovered that someone, in order to
compress the cartoon's size, had chopped off a rather vital part of the humor.
The newspaper ran a correction the following day but, all in all, it's sort of nice for a change
when no one understands one of my cartoons but it's not my fault.
133
SUBTLE THINGS
By trial and error few things over the years about some of the more
I've learned a
intangible aspects of cartooning that sometimes make or break the final result.
The act of drawing is a continuous learning process for me, and I greatly envy a
—
number of cartoonists who have truly mastered their "instrument." I haven't but
I'm working at it.
I assume stand-up comics either work at or intuitively understand things like
timing, voice inflection, delivery, body language, etc. (Obviously, they must also
have good material, but a lot of good it does them without these other skills.) In
cartooning, there are nuances and subtleties in both the drawing and the caption
that parallel some of these same elements.
In this next section I've tried to show a few examples of where these things
have come to play in The Far Side; sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
134
1981
~Z^
"Fair is fair, Larry .... We're out of food, we drew straws

you lost"
Many times in drawing faces, I find that it's the understatement of an expression that
is so very
humor. The dog, in this case, is a good example of trying to accomplish that. I
vital to the
wanted him to look confident and a little smug, but not elated. He didn't get the short straw, but
this is nevertheless a serious moment.
135
"Hey! Look at me, everybody! I'm a cowboy! . . . Howdy, howdy, howdy!"
/ struggled for hours with what I thought was the humor's focal point in this cartoon. I couldn't
decide if putting the coat on the vulture was gratuitous or not, worrying that only the hat was
necessary. Making a decision between hat and coat versus just hat had me climbing the walls.
When all was said and done, I don't think that had anything to do with where the humor was
really coming from. In this case, I think it's the tag at the end of the caption ("Howdy, howdy,
howdy") that makes it funny. (I should have left off the coat.)
On the left is the first version of this cartoon, which, after completing, I felt contained a fundamental
error in showing the action. The second version implies what is about to happen, thereby heightening
both the tension and (hopefully) the humor.
136
"What a find, Williams! The fossilized footprint of a "Now this end is called the thagomizer . . . after the
brachiosaurus! . . . And a Homo habilus thrown in to boot!' late Thag Simmons."
/ wasn't sure which section of this book would be a good place to get this off my chest, but I've
always felt that I've committed some heresy by doing cartoons (like the ones above) that mixed
dinosaurs with primitive people. I think there should be cartoon confessionals where we could
—
go and say things like, "Father, I have sinned / have drawn dinosaurs and hominids together
in the same cartoon."
137
.
And then Jake saw something that grabbed his attention.
Thematically similar, I'm afraid both these cartoons ended up generating confusion among some
readers. I was trying to contrast a dog's perspective on the world with that of our own.
The first cartoon deals with what I believe is a universal behavior in all dogs: their
fascination for one another. When a dog riding in a car sees another dog on the street, there's
not much that's going to distract the first animal from checking the second one out. Our own
world (which is coming to an end) is not necessarily the dog's.
In the second cartoon, I was just trying to suggest that it doesn't really matter what you do for
a living or how big of a jerk you are, your dog still likes to see you come home.
Both drawings imply that, no matter what the circumstances, dogs are, after all, still dogs.
138
"
/ was nervous about cartoon when its "debut"

this
approached. At the time, a cartoon depicting a human
head in ajar was, shall we say, uncommon on the
comic pages. Strangely enough, I never received or
heard a single complaint about this cartoon and I —
believe the main reason was the drawing itself (of
course, The Far Side was only in four newspapers at
the time). The point of the humor, I felt, was the
innocent fascination children have for things they find
—
almost anywhere the beach, the woods, etc. and the —
fact that this "innocence" was about to come crashing
down on top of this pleasant-looking schoolteacher. I
was careful, however, to make the head in the jar look
sort of silly and benign —
any gratuitous details would
have distracted from the humor and I think repelled a
lot of readers.
'And next, for show and tell, Bobby Henderson says he has
.
something he found on the beach last summer. .
Before I start work on any cartoon, I usually have a

fairly good idea what the caption is going to say.
In this instance, and in the last few moments of my
deadline, I uncharacteristically made a sweeping
change of the entire thing. Originally, the caption read,
"Look, but don't touch —or the mother will throw it
out."
I stillhave no idea what came over me that made me
suddenly see it another way, but when the cartoon was
published it seemed to generate a favorable response
from more than a few people And I always found that
.
to be sort of interesting. Does this mean we all have a

latent desire to stuff worms into a baby —
or is it just
me?
'It's still hungry . . . and I've been stuffing worms
into it all day."
139
1986
//////J/J.L
jnntmwMWMfd'
Dog threat letters
/ think I made an error in judgment regarding this cartoon. The partial view of the dog running away
was really unnecessary and even redundant. After all, these are cats, there's a bone lying on the floor,
the note speaks for itself (no pun intended), and the title reveals the whole little story. So why did I
draw the dog? And now that I look at it again, this should have been a night scene. I have to move
onto something else now because I'm depressed.
Simultaneously all three went for the ball, and the coconut-like sound of their heads colliding secretly delighted the bird.
When I originally wrote this caption, it read (in part): ". . . the coconut-like sound of their heads hitting
secretly delighted the bird." That's the way it was first published.
Then I got a letter from some fellow who suggested, in this case, the word "colliding" would be a
better substitute for the word "hitting."
This was quite strange to me. First of all, I had struggled with this caption and never felt comfortable
with the final outcome. And secondly, he was right. "Colliding" was a much better word, giving the
caption an improved rhythm. So I changed it.
140
The goal in any cartoon is to create that perfect
marriage between the drawing and the caption (if there
is one). And this cartoon, I feel, is a good example of
when that goal is reached.

Visually, Iwanted to capture the look and feel of a
scene from an old Bogart film. (I would have preferred
the elephant be a little more hidden in the shadows
under the staircase, but it's difficult to pull off those
subtleties in newsprint.)
But the caption had accomplish the same dramatic
to
touch. In general, it's risky to write long captions that
contain two or more sentences, because it tends to
break continuity with the static image. I think this one ,
works, however, because there's no exaggerated action

in the drawing. The elephant is speaking under his
breath, and Mr. Schneider has turned around and
frozen in his tracks. Even if this little scene were
animated, we wouldn't see much more movement than
what's captured in this cartoon.
"Remember me, Mr. Schneider? Kenya. 1947. If you're going

to shoot at an elephant, Mr. Schneider, you better be prepared
to finish the job."
Now, here's an idea that just plain and simple didn't

work. (Of course, it has plenty of company in that
regard.)
I was thinking about Western films and that common
scene of some guy getting thrown out the swinging
doors and into the street. In this case, every customer
in the place is either running or being thrown
—
out implying that there's a pretty tough and angry
character somewhere inside. And how tough a guy is
this mystery person? Well, that's his bear parked
outside. It's confusing, obtuse, esoteric, and
strange — in other words, it's a Far Side cartoon.
141
wo
(to
p*
St
HI
Punk porcupines
/'venever solicited or accepted ideas for cartoons from anyone. For a variety of reasons, I've always
preferred to go it alone —
sink or swim.
But a couple of days after "punk porcupines" was published, a friend of mine suggested the cartoon
should have been titled, "Punkupines." He was right, dammit.
"I've got an idea .... How many here have ever seen Alfred Hitchcock's The BirdsT'
This cartoon has always bothered me because of a basic error: The birds' wings are raised before the
question is even asked. I think it would have been better in this case to have just left the wings down.
142
. .
I'vealways liked this cartoon. And what really made it

work (for me, at least) is not just the premise that the
deer have to use these outhouses, but also the repeated
phrase at the end of the caption. "The deer would
come, the deer would come" helps give the reader a
sense that Hank is aware that his long, purposeful wait
will have inevitable results.
Hank knew this place well. He need only wait

. . . .The deer
would come, the deer would come.
At the time drew this cartoon (1984), I don't think

I
human skulls were an everyday sight on the comic
page. (Of course, now they're everywhere / think I—
saw Marmaduke burying one in the backyard.) With
that in mind, I was careful to make sure there was
nothing too gruesome about these two characters.
Each of them ended up purposefully with an overall
goofy expression and just a hint of a smile.
"OK, one more time and it's off to bed for the both of you .
'Hey, Bob. Think there are any bears in this old cave?' . .
'I dunno, Jim. Let's take a look.'"
143
This made a few people upset.
I can't say that that reaction caught me off-guard this
time, but I at least attempted to soften its impact with
those same people (and my editor) by making the
baby's status indefinite. He's not supposed to look
dead, stuffed, alive, fake, or anything. It's just your
standard baby-in-a-bottle (with stand). I'm just now
—
looking at him here, and, man that's a big baby!
"Beats me how they did it ... I got the whole thing at a garage
sale for five bucks — and that included the stand."
This never worked the way I wanted.

In drawing these employees taking a work break and
playing "marbles" with their merchandise I realized I ,
could never say the words "glass eye" in the caption.

The players already know they're glass eyes and would
most likely refer to them in a more casual
—
vernacular such as kids do with marbles with words
like puries, steelies, cat's-eyes, etc.
But I couldn't figure out any slang names for various
kinds of glass eyes. (Or at least not before my
deadline.) Maybe it would have been better if the
caption read, "Just a word of warning, Myron if you
—
miss, I'm coming after your Albino Water Buffalo
#709."
"Just a word of warning, Myron — if you miss, I'm comin'
after your big hazel."
144
Another example of when a cartoon's intent was lost on a lot of people. Very simply, I just meant that
we all look a little longer and harder at things that fall upon our particular interests.
Circa 1500 A.D.: Horses are introduced to America.
This one of my personal favorites based mostly on one character's facial expression. The simple
is
"gag" is that Indians and horses are meeting for the first time and handshakes are going all around.
But it's the horse gesturing toward the scenery that I felt "made" this cartoon. I can't express it, but
there's something captured there that I just like. If I had to draw it over again, the other characters
—
could be drawn a myriad of ways but I don't think I could ever replicate that one horse's expression.
145
1982
"Blast it, Henry! ... I think the dog is following us."
Because The Far Side is a vertical, single-panel cartoon, I've rarely had the luxury of being able
to draw long things (like whales, snakes, ships, etc.) in an accommodating shape. In general,
the perspective has to be from front to rear, as opposed to side to side. (Sunday cartoons, which I
started not long ago, and modified dailies are the only exceptions.)
In cartoon strips, you frequently see the latter aproach —because the strip lends itself well to
horizontal images. In The Far Side, as the examples on this page indicate, ships come at you
head on, classrooms are viewed from either the front or the back, and riding in the car is often
seen from the perspective of the backseat looking forward or from the windshield looking
inward. I just can't draw a '59 Cadillac in profile.
I'm saying this because I drew The Far Side for years without truly being cognizant of why I
approached it this way. I was just ways to cram things into a little rectangle.
trying to figure out
Itwas a friend of mine (also a cartoonist) who pointed out that I had inadvertently developed
one or two drawing skills in the process.
The limitation of space I fought in the beginning ended up being the best drawing instructor I
ever had.
146
"Yes! That's right! the answer is "Wisconsin! Another 50 points In God's kitchen
for God, and uh-oh, looks like Norman, our current
. . .
champion, hasn't even scored yet."
Drawing God in any context, let alone a cartoon, poses

some obvious risks.
In the upper left cartoon, I was careful todo two
things: First, I made God way I
look the think most of
us are pretty sure he looks. Secondly, I made sure he
was really winning hands down. Even if Norman had
only ten points would have meant that he beat God to
it
the buzzer at least once, and someone would have

gotten mad.
"In God's Kitchen" was fairly benign, since the
emphasis was mostly on the earth and the suggestion
that things aren't quite normal here and why.
I was mostly worried about the last cartoon shown
here. Not because of readers, who for the most part
found it to be a light and silly drawing, but because I
started to feel like I was bucking for a lightning bolt to
come out of the sky and turn me into something like the
kid here.
God as a kid tries to make a chicken in his room.
147
My first caption to this read: "Hey, buddy.... You wanna
buy an ungulate?" Of course, almost everyone knows
that "ungulate" is the collective term for hoofed
mammal, but then why risk confusion among a handful
of illiterates?
"Hey, buddy .... You wanna buy a hoofed mammal?"
All I justwanted to say about this cartoon was that I

think I drew a pretty cool ship in the background.
Thank you very much.
"Well, I guess that ain't a bad story — but let me tell you about
the time I lost thisl"
148
This cartoon was never published. It was submitted when outhouses were
in the early eighties
still forbidden by my Regardless, I'm afraid the focus of the
editor. humor (Tarzan's crossed legs)
was a little too subtle in the small format.
149
A few days after this cartoon was published, I started getting a considerable amount of reaction
from people who enjoyed it. But I found it interesting that, without exception, they were
enjoying it from a different standpoint from the one I had intended. If you look at the
enlargement of the two little calves, you'll see that one of them is doing the old hoof-behind-the-
head trick to its sibling. Apparently, it was just too subtle in the original. (In fact, it sort of
looks like the one calf is just wearing a ribbon.) I wish now I had developed this into a series of
places the Hoist eins had visited. ("The Hoist eins visit Three Mile Island" would have been
interesting.)
150
This cartoon about Mr. Pembrose evidently left a fair number of people wondering what in
God's name was going on here.
Mr. Pembrose (I have no idea where this name came from. In general, I just try to match
characters with names that "feel right." ), from whatever circumstances in his life have rendered
—
him such, is only an eye. (Yes, that's supposed to be an eyeball resting on the couch the image
all but vanished after size reduction.) And who wouldn't have more than a little anger toward
the world if ending up as an eye was the card life dealt them?
OK. maxbe it doesn't work.
151
"Just back off, buddy . . . unless you want a fat lip."
Well, so much for my theory that understatement is an important aspect of humor in The Far Side. Of
course, I could make the argument that this guy's nose could've just as easily been made bigger, but my
instinct for subtlety knew to play it down.
152
spouse
PUBLIC RESPONSE
I have this friend named Ernie. Ernie's sense of humor makes my own seem
normal. Every blue moon or so the phone will ring and I'll hear Ernie's voice say,
"Hey! I really liked tonight's cartoon!" And then I know I'm in trouble. When
Ernie likes one of my cartoons, it means the rest of my readers have just been
offended.
In this section I've reprinted some of the more controversial cartoons and the
reader reaction each has provoked.
Some of the letters have been published on the editorial pages of various
newspapers. Some were addressed to me via my syndicate. In either case, the
names have been changed so I don't get my butt sued off.
I've honestly never set out to deliberately offend anyone (well, maybe that
one time). All I've really done, like most cartoonists, is just followed my own
intuition and sensibilities of what's funny and what isn't. I think there's nothing
whoever can do. I mean, it's not that I
else a cartoonist, stand-up comic, writer, or
necessarily wouldn't draw a cartoon like Henry or Snuffy Smith or Blondie, it's
that I can't. If I drew Blondie, for example, it would still come out looking like
The Far Side; Daisy would get rabies and bite Dagwood, who'd go insane and
have Mr. Dithers stuffed —whatever that means.
Cartoon humor is strange in that it's a totally silent world of creation and
reaction. The cartoonist never hears laughter, groans, curses, fits of rage, or
anything. maybe that's kind of nice.) It's a daily shoot-in-the-dark
(Actually,
—
approach to humor some things hit their target and some don't. The target, of
course, is anyone who shares a similar sense of humor. The problem, however
(and as these letters show), is when innocent bystanders (e.g., Nancy fans) are hit
by the same cartoon.
In my own defense, however, I've noticed a frequent common denominator in
most of these complaints: They're usually from people who misinterpreted the
cartoon. And it's even more curious to me that people often seem angered by a
cartoon they don't "get." Well, hell — I don't understand all my cartoons.
In recent years, I decided that the majority of these "hate" letters had to be
responded to in a sensitive and professional manner: So I asked my syndicate to
do it.
755
The "Cow tools" episode is one that
will probably haunt me for the rest of
my life. A week after it was published
back in 1982, wanted to crawl into a
I
hole somewhere and die.

Cows, as some Far Side readers
know, are a favorite subject of mine.
I've always found them to be the
quintessentially absurd animal for
situations even more absurd. Even the
name "cow," to me, is intrinsically
funny.
And so one day I started thinking
back on an anthropology course I had
in college and how we learned that man
used to be defined as "the only animal
that made and shaped tools."
Unfortunately, researchers discovered
that certain primatesand even some
Cow tools
bird species did the same thing so the —
definition had to be extended somewhat
to avoid awkward situations such as someone hiring a crew of chimpanzees to
remodel their kitchen.
Inevitably, I began thinking about cows, and what if they, too, were discovered
as toolmakers. What would they make? Primitive tools are always, well,
primitive-looking —appearing rather nondescript to the lay person. So, it seemed
to me, whatever a cow would make would have to be even a couple notches
further down the "skill-o-meter."
I imagined, and subsequently drew, a cow standing next to her workbench,
proudly displaying her handiwork (hoofiwork?). The "cow tools" were supposed
to be just meaningless artifacts —only the cow or a cowthropologist is supposed to
know what they're used for.
The first mistake I made was in thinking this was funny. The second was
making one of the tools resemble a crude handsaw which made already —
confused people decide that their only hope in understanding the cartoon meant
deciphering what the other tools were as well. Of course, they didn't have a
chance in hell.
But, for the first time, "Cow tools" awakened me to the fact that my profession
was not just an isolated exercise in the corner of my apartment. The day after its
release, my phone began from reporters and radio stations

to ring with inquiries
from regions in the country where The Far Side was published. Everyone, it
seemed, wanted to know what in the world this cartoon meant! My syndicate was
equally bombarded, and I was ultimately asked to write a press release
156
explaining "Cow tools." Someone sent me the front page of one newspaper
which, down in one corner, ran the tease, "Cow Tools: What does it mean? (See
pg. B14.)" I was mortified.
In the first year ortwo of drawing The Far Side, I always believed my career
perpetually hung by a thread. And this time I was convinced it had been finally
severed. Ironically, when the dust had finally settled and as a result of all the
"noise" it made, "Cow tools" became more of a boost to The Far Side than
anything else.
So, in summary, I drew a really weird, obtuse cartoon that no one understood
and wasn't funny and therefore I went on to even greater success and recognition.
Yeah — I like this country.
"The Far Side, a single-panel cartoon by Gary Larson, obviously went too far
to the side some time ago and threw great chunks of the populace into
paralytic confusion. " —Newspaper Columnist, Chicago
"Iasked 37 people to explain the 'Cow tools' (cartoon) of last week but with
no luck. Could you help? " Reader, California —
Enclosed is a copy of the Cow Tools cartoon. I have passed it around. I
" '
'
have posted it on the wall. Conservatively, some 40-odd professionals with

doctoral degrees in disparate disciplines have examined it. No one
understands it. Even my 6-year-old cannot figure it out. .We are going . .
bonkers. Please help. What is the meaning of 'Cow Tools'? What is the
meaning of life? " —Reader, Texas
"We give up. Being intelligent, hard-working men, we don't often say this,
but your cartoon has proven to be beyond any of our intellectual capabilities.
... Is there some significance to this cartoon that eludes us, or have we been
completely foolish in our attempts to unravel the mystery behind Cow '
Tools ? ' " —Reader, California
"Irepresent a small band of Fellows from every walk of American Life, who
have been drawn together by a need to know, a need to understand and a
certain perplexity about what to do with this decade. We are a special interest
group under the umbrella organization of The Fellowship of the Unexplained.
. The Cow Tools Fellows have been brought together by the absolute
. .
certainty that your cartoon captioned Cow Tools means something. But, as
'
'
this letter signifies, just what it might mean has escaped us. " Reader, California —
"Allow us to introduce ourselves: two humble and dedicated civil servants
who begin every working day with a one-hour review of the funnies. Mister
Larson, please write us and let us know the message that this comic drawing
is intended to portray. As an artist, you have a professional responsibility to
your constituents, especially those whose mental health hinges upon the comic
relief provided by your work. " Reader, Alabama —
157
The flak over the "Tethercat" cartoon is
of a sort always find interesting. I

I
could understand the problem if these

were kids batting an animal around a
between
pole, but the natural animosity
dogs and cats has always provided
fodder for humor in various forms. In
animated children's cartoons, for
example, dogs and cats are constantly
getting smashed into oblivion by a
variety of violent means. (I'd like to
know if the creators of "Tom and Jerry"

got these letters. Probably, so that
doesn't help me.)
What I think I've figured out is, in
animation, a cat might be flattened by a
steamroller or blown up by
get
dynamite, but a few seconds later we
Tethercat
see him back in business — chasing
something or being chased until he's
"killed" again. There's never a
suggestion that the cat's suffering is anything but transitory. In a single-panel
cartoon, however, no resolution is possible. The dogs play "tethercat" forever.
You put the cartoon down, come back to it a few hours later, and, yep those dogs —
are still playing "tethercat." I suppose some people may have appreciated a
disclaimer at the bottom of the cartoon saying, "Note: A few minutes later, the cat
escaped, returned with a bazooka and blew the dogs away." (Of course, now I'm
on the dogs' case.)
158
" " " " "
"
That humeri As a teacher, I know what TV has done to
is sick, sick
children's behavior and cartoons like this are in bad taste.
Reader, New Jersey —
"With so many sick people in the world today, it doesn't take much to give
them ideas. " —Reader, California
"Iwas hurt and offended by today's 'Tethercat, which made a cruel and '
inhumane 'joke' out of abuse of a small animal. — Reader, New York "
"
the message your company and Mr. Larson want to communicate to
Is this
the children reading this kind of behavior? It is no wonder at the amount of
insensitivity in today's generation. " Reader, New Jersey —
"Please get on the ball — you can't print something good and
if caring, don't
print at all. We will be missing nothing. " —
Reader, New Jersey
"If this is Mr. Larson's idea of humor, he could use a good psychiatrist, if this
is the idea of humor in Kansas City, thank God I don't live there!
—Reader, New Jersey
"
No doubt some stupid mixed-up weirdo will see the cartoon and get some
poor cat and try to emulate the cartoon. ... I am really offended by this
cartoon. " —Reader, Texas
"We and millions of readers, long-time subscribers, did not like your uncalled-
for humor. " —Reader, California
"
More than once I have felt this urge to write my distaste for this particular
comic and have wondered over the judgment of the ones who select this type
of humor to be sent into the homes of your readers.
—Reader, Florida
"You should be severely reprimanded by animal protection authorities, in
newspaper publication and, if possible you should be fined at least $1,000
. . .
for each such cruel cartoon. " Reader, Mississippi —

"
As an animal lover I find the suggestion of a cat hung by the neck for the
purpose of sport, regardless of the context, to be extremely offensive.
—Reader, Northwest Territory, Canada
"
I am seriously thinking of canceling my daily subscription to the local paper
because of the sick strips my son read aloud to me about animal cruelty.
—Reader, New Jersey
159
Published in December of 1984, 1 think
this cartoon of Fifi running excitedly
toward the braced little door was the
first Far Side cartoon to score really big
in the negative-reaction department.
In the vast majority of my cartoons
where the theme is human vs. animal,
it's the animal that usually tri-
—
umphs betraying what is probably my
basic cynicism toward my own kind
(especially my neighbor three doors
down) and a fondness for wildlife.
When that formula is reversed,
however, as in this cartoon, some
people find nothing funny beyond what
they simply see: a cute little animal
about to suffer at the hands of his
master. "Animal-lovers" are usually
outraged at these sorts of things, often
"Here, Fifi! C'mon! . . . Faster, Fifl!"
rallying behind the familiar "the-
children-will-be-corrupted doctrine.
Well, here's my unresearched, knee-jerk analysis of why it's quite possible for
someone to laugh at this or similar cartoons without necessarily being "sick" (or
maybe just a little).
First of all, the key element in any attempt at humor is Our brain is
conflict.
suddenly jolted into trying to accept something that is unacceptable. The punch
line of a joke is the part that conflicts with the first part, thereby surprising us and
throwing our synapses into some kind of fire drill. (I've read all this
somewhere Mad magazine, I think.) And the emotional response to this kind of
conflict can range from laughter to a broken nose. In any humorous vehicle
(comedy, cartoons, Pintos, etc.), this conflict, whether subtle or blunt, is
mandatory.
Back to this cartoon.
Most of the civilized world, I'm convinced, hates little rat-sized dogs named
"Fifi." The reason has probably as much to do with the type of people who own
them as the dogs themselves. But in this cartoon there's an immediate conflict;
the reader is asked to accept the unacceptable — that the dog's own master (the
standard, heavy-set, matriarchal-type woman) is setting up her own dog for an
unpleasant experience. Why, of course, no one knows.
So, what you see in this cartoon, I believe, is the classic conflict of one or more
elements within a specific context, causing a momentary sense of confusion in the
cerebral cortex and ultimately evoking some kind of response. Or, if you don't buy
that, then you get to see one of those miserable little dogs getting "bonked."
160
"
"Do you really think this cartoon is funny? Obviously you don't think much
of an animal to think this one up! " —Reader, South Dakota
"
The Far Side is funny — if you are insensitive to pathos and so long as the
victim is funny looking. " —Reader, Connecticut
"To me, something is wrong when humor shows someone taking advantage of
an animal and that the animal will be hurt. " Reader, Connecticut —
"Gary Larson's cartoon made me furious. It was cruel, stupid and ridiculous,
not to mention hideous, idiotic and sick. In fact, all of Larson's cartoons
make me furious. " —Reader, Connecticut
"
This is not entertainment and it is not acceptable to a caring person.
—Reader, Connecticut
"
The Far Side is an example of sick humor and does not belong in a family
newspaper. " —Reader, Connecticut
"
The comic panel The Far Side should be put on the far side of the moon,
where nobody can see it. Reader, Connecticut
" —
161
^
Now this one caught me totally off

guard.
I drew this cartoon in an attempt to
capture the ultimate fantasy of any dog
inclined to chase cars — that fantasy, of
course, would be to actually one day
succeed in making a "kill." As a wolf
might be envisioned to lift his head
above the carcass of a freshly killed
moose and howl triumphantly in the
moonlight, the "dream" of this dog was
to behave similarly over the carcass of a
freshly killed Buick.
But I made one mistake. Since the car
was supposedly "dead," I put it on its
back —never to run again. And since the

silhouette of the car's underside was now
visible, I drew in the transmission case
for a touch of realism. I never should
When car chasers dream
have done that. The place where the
transmission would normally go
conflicted with where I wanted to place the dog straddling the car —so I just sort of
worked them both in as best I could.
The result was another outcry. If you haven't already noticed (and I again
emphasize that neither I nor my editors did), the dog and the car appear to be
"romantically" entangled. Or, as a friend of mine phrased it, "Hey! That dog's
humpin' the car!"
No, he isn't —and I know because I'm the one who drew the damn thing in the first
place. I mean, I can reluctantly see how some people might be led to think that
that's what's happening. But then, what would the point of the cartoon be? Every
dog's fantasy is to make it with a car? I don't get it.
162
" "
"To some of our readers it appears the dog is copulating with the car. To me
it's not as clear, but I think the panel is vague enough to be interpreted that
way. I think both the cartoonist and his editors need to consider the possible
interpretations when submitting material for newspapers that circulate
broadly in the community. " Newspaper Editor, Massachusetts —
" I think the enclosed cartoon is much too raunchy for a newspaper of general
circulation. " —Newspaper Editor, New Jersey
"This item goes so far beyond the bounds of decency I'm at a loss for
. . .
words to describe it. " Reader, Illinois —

"If I've got to start screening The Far Side for obscenity, then I don't need
it. " —Newspaper Editor, Tennessee
"The Far Side has really been in very poor taste.

. . .We have three sons
. . .
in the fourth and fifth grades who read the comics each day, because the
paper comes to our house. But today they will not read your paper nor any
future edition because we are canceling our subscription Immediately "
—Reader, Louisiana
"Please tell me this dog isn't doing to this car what the entire staff
believes it is doing to this car. " —Newspaper Editor, Pennsylvania
"The Far Side is getting too far out. This particular cartoon should have
appeared in Playboy or some such magazine.
—Newspaper Publisher, North Carolina
"The cartoon exceeded being 'sick' and became offensive. There was no
. . .
way to avoid seeing it. I do not believe that this cartoon should have been
placed in a family newspaper. I believe you owe your readers an apology.
—Reader, North Carolina
"
Is this what freedom of the press means
you and your paper?
to You . . .
have that right; however, you have poor taste and lack of respect for your
readers also. " —Reader, North Carolina
163
CONfrRftTULATlOMS
BOB
"You know, Russell, you're a great torturer. I mean, you can

make a man scream mercy in nothing flat but
for . . boy, you
.
sure can't make a good cup of coffee."
Every time I do a cartoon about dungeons and torturing, etc., I get a letter from a group called
Amnesty International. They feel cartoons on this subject are insensitive to the fact that
torturing is something that continues to this day all over the world. And, although I feel my
cartoons treat the subject in a mostly harmless way, this group has at least raised my
consciousness to this problem.
But what I want to know is, does Wizard of Id get these letters?
164
/ took some heat from a few parents about this cartoon,
but this one that remains one of my personal
is
favorites. It's just such a ludicrous situation trying to

pull itself off as a serious one.
I wanted to write back to a couple of these people (I
never did) and say, now, c'mon: look at this cartoon:
First of all, this cartoon "couple" have not hired a
witch-like babysitter to watch their kids — they've hired
a witch/ Secondly, they're not horrified at what's
occurred, as we might suspect, but mostly indignant.
And lastly, they're especially upset that the witch ate
both their kids —as if to suggest one would have been
pretty bad, but both is really unacceptable.
It's even more interesting to me that fairy tales
themselves, frequently full of violence and scary things,
are directed at children —
which is mostly condoned.
This cartoon, on the other hand, merely satirizing a
is
common fairy tale theme (e.g., "Hansel and Gretel")

and directing the humor at adults. Now that's
confusing.
'Now let me get this straight. ... We hired you to babysit the
kids, and instead you cooked and ate them bothV
Reaction to this cartoon baffled me.

Although for the most part I think readers understood
the "gag," a few individuals accused me of having fun
at the expense of hydrocephalics. Yep that's what they—
said.
I hope obvious to most people that
it's
hydrocephalicus (I still can't believe it) had nothing to

do with the cartoon.
Singling out any tragic disease for ridicule would
never fall within my own standards — let alone my
editors.
So what do they think about Charlie Brown ?
Unknown to most historians, William Tell had an older and
less fortunate son named Warren.
165
1987
More than few people misunderstood and

a
subsequently complained about this cartoon. \
Apparently (and I sort of understand this), they

interpreted the drawing to mean that the cat
had been tied up as "bait" for the dog. That
wasn't my intent.
was trying to create a little story here: This
I
family owns a dog, they recently introduced a

new cat to this home, and during the night the
dog sent them a message, that the cat's not
wanted. The dog did this to the cat. The dog!
The dog! The dog!
"Emma ... the dog ain't goin' for the new cat."
was deeply saddened when The Far Side cartoon depicting a trussed cat
" I
hanging by its tail appeared in our local newspaper. I shuddered to think of

the children, who, looking at the comic page, might be prompted to carry out
this act. " —Reader, Ohio
"This cartoon today smacks of the idea of using cats/kittens/puppies to train
fighting dogs. It is immoral and disgusting. " —Reader, California
was astonished at the enclosed cartoon which depicts a

"I cat subjected to
anguish, tied up and suspended. Reader, New York " —
have enjoyed your comic panel The Far Side for years.
"I All this has . . .
changed now, thanks to one shockingly awful panel I saw a few weeks ago.
.The cruelty and sickness of this 'cartoon' was too deep to easily forget
. .
— or forgive. ... A depiction of a person 'hanging' a cat and offering it to

a dog is not impossible. I lost two of my cats in similar situations.
—Reader, California
"
My letter protested what saw as a sadistic and pointless Gary Larson
I
cartoon depicting a trussed and hanging cat left to be devoured by a dog.

—Reader, Oregon
166
A few days after this cartoon was
published, my syndicate received a
very indignant letter from someone
representing the Jane Goodall Institute.
Not only did my syndicate and I both
was a vague
get read the Riot Act, there
implication that litigation over this
cartoon might be around the corner.
I was horrified. Not so much from a
fear of being sued (I just couldn't see
how this cartoon could be construed as
anything but silly), but because of my
deep respect for Jane Goodall and her
well-known contributions to pri-
matology. The last thing in the world I
would have intentionally done was
offend Dr. Goodall in any way.
Before I had a chance to write my
"Well, well — another blond hair. Conducting a little more
. . .
apology, another complication arose.
'research' with that Jane Goodall tramp?" The National Geographic Society
contacted my syndicate and expressed a
desire to reprint the cartoon in a special centennial issue of their magazine. My
editor, aware of what had just occurred, declined, explaining why.
Apparently, whoever it was from National Geographic, was
that sent the inquiry
shocked. They told my editor that "that doesn't sound like the Jane Goodall we
know." They did some checking themselves, and an interesting fact was
eventually discovered: Jane Goodall loved the cartoon. Furthermore, she was
totally unaware that any of this "stuff' was going on. Some phone calls were
made, and the cartoon was reprinted in the centennial issue of National
Geographic magazine.
I've since had an opportunity to visit Dr. Goodall at her research facility in
Gombe.
Everything's cool.
—
"To refer to Dr. Goodall as a tramp is inexcusable even by a self-described 'loony'
as Larson. The cartoon was incredibly offensive and in such poor taste that
readers might well question the editorial judgment of running such an atrocity in a
newspaper that reputes to be supplying news to persons with a better than average
intelligence. The cartoon and its message were absolutely stupid. " Excerpt from the —
above-mentioned letter that started the ruckus
167
Bobbing for poodles
"You have offended millions of pet owners with this garbage. If you can not
do better than this, we suggest you seek another occupation.
—Reader, Florida
Thank God I didn't go with my first caption, "Bobbing for babies."
168
And, finally, my response to all those who took the time to register their complaints:
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REJECTED CARTOONS
The following cartoons were all immediately rejected by my editors. In most

cases, their decision to do so probably saved my career. People who think I
already push the limits of good taste may want to skip this section.
Figure this one out: When drew and

I originally
submitted this cartoon, the ants were carrying an older
man. That's it, everything else was identical. The
cartoon came back to me, unused, with the words "no
thanks" written across it from my editor.
I waited a few weeks, and then resubmitted the
—
cartoon only this time with a baby substituted for the My editor and I both agreed that there were probably
man. And then they accepted it! I'm still scratching my just too many horse lovers in the world to pull this off.
head about that one. It never ran.
'You idiots! . . . We'll never get that thing down the hole!" "Well, old Roy here said he was hungry enough to eat one, and
then I thought, well, shoot, so am I, and one thing sort of led to
another ... I guess it was some kind of hysteria.
172
/ drew eons ago but never submitted
this it for publication
—for obvious reasons.
"Shhhhh! ... the Maestro is decomposing!
My editor balked at this cartoon initially, not because

of the somewhat unsavory suggestion that Warren was
choking on the cat, but because he feared not enough
people would know what the Heimlich maneuver was.
"Well, I guess both Warren and the cat are OK. But thank
. . .
goodness for the Heimlich maneuver!"
173
/ knew scrambled babies wouldn't fly with most of the it
civilized world, much less my editor, although I did try

to make them look cute.
for
,r
l!m sorry/ bu\'£ ordered
Just a drawing of a patrol boy and his encounter with

an elderly couple from Nebraska. It was rejected.
£4&0h
174
years dying to do a cartoon about
I've spent the last ten
dung beetles (hasn't everyone?) but I've always known
their very name would present —
problems let
editorial
alone what I'd have them doing. I guess I just drew it
for my own amusement.
"Oh/ cf>™or\y \Nofrer\ -tt'!> +he duno bee"H*sf._

l
Ard. -tWy'ê got- th-eir yew- Know -VvM'vaj^ -VW*:
N No, you really didn't see this. Turn the page.
175
Well, what can I say? My editor returned this to me
before the ink had dried. If it had been published, I'm
sure I would have been up a certain creek without a
paddle.
As any syndicated
I've indicated, before the public sees
cartoons, they're first screened by an editor or two for
potential problems And editors, I'm convinced, have
.
saved my career many times by their decision not to

publish certain cartoons. Of course, that doesn't mean
it's any less frustrating when their decisions seem
strangely arcane or capricious.
My editor didn't want to publish this cartoon. I can't
recall his exact words on the subject, but basically he
felt that not many people would understand the
reference to the Wizard of Oz. Eventually, I was able
to convince him to let it go through, and, when all was
said and done, I doubt there were really many people
who didn't understand it. (Strange, when you think of
the weird, confusing cartoons they never hesitate to
print.) Nevertheless, I can't be critical of these events;
my editor's scorecard is still way ahead.
'Auntie Em, Auntie Em! . . . There's no place like home!
There's no place like home."
776
This is much more effective if you imagine sound effects as well. I never even tried to submit this one.
the
'
And r\Q\AJ
}
os 1 cut umbilical cor<A y your baby'j li-Fe bînS-'
^&**y\.
177
/thought this was pretty funny, and I think my editor
—
did too but it was voted down.
Xs If irae ? Xs rh true? Xs +he Pope adhokc ?

"
Does a hear.,. Welilhnow^huô, Arêlo.
/submitted this for publication several years before it

actually ran. My editor worried about its impact on
some readers, although he personally loved it so much
he kept the original on his office wall.
And then one day there was a mix-up over the number
of backlogged cartoons, producing a shortage, and this
one had to be pulled off the wall and used.
'Hey, Bob ... did I scare you or what?"
178
This was rejected by my editor and never published, but
I was never quite sure why. I guess it has a slightly
"gross" overtone, but I just meant that ants are fond of Iv;...;,..Jl w J i_J
egg yolk. Really.
EZO I
eh EE3F
^Cqa&°~h
This very early cartoon of mine was rejected for use in

The Far Side. My editor said he would consider it if I
removed the drops of "water" falling from the alien's
arms. Itwouldn't have been a big deal, but I just
moved on to other things.
"Take me to your leader,' I and then the most hideous
said ...
thing happened."
179
"Kevin! . . . Was that you?'
''VAJell/it'S rot me!-- Someone

else must be rotVlnq- "
for f/iemost part, any humor considered even remotely scatological is taboo to most editors. In
the first years of drawing The Far Side, in fact, I wasn't even allowed to show an outhouse,
regardless of how it was handled.
180
"This is it, Jenkins. . . . Indisputable proof that the Ice Age "This is it, Jenkins. . . . Indisputable proof that the Ice Age
caught these people completely off guard." caught these people completely off guard."
Actually, I rejected the first version of this (on the left) myself. I knew my editor would ponder
the good-taste quotient of this cartoon, so I decided not to risk it and closed the door a few more
inches.
181
"Well, just look at you, Jimmy! Soaking wet, hair mussed up, shoes untied
. . .
and take that horrible thing out of your mouth!"
with my cartoon on
The Los Angeles Times, which carries The Far Side, has taken umbrage
several occasions. (Apparently, someone there actually reads the
comics beforehand.) These
three, as I recall, created some conflicts with the "good
taste" standards of that paper, and I
believe all three were deleted from their comic page back in
the early eighties.
papers censoring
The first two I suppose are subjective, although I don't remember other
the elephant cartoon, however, had me baffled. I've always found
it
them. Their rejection of
182
"What? . . . They turned it into a vvostebasket?"
appalling that the demand for ivory has caused these magnificent animals to be continuously
poached—but the ultimate act of contempt for the rights of wildlife has got to be represented by
the elephant's foot wastebasket. And that's the point I was striving for in this cartoon —not that I
was hoping to make a profound comment of any sort (the cartoon is really pretty inane, I think),
but just who wouldn't be upset to find out something like this had been done to a former part of
their anatomy?
183
It
TLeEJd
s
THE EXHIBIT
I drew few years ago entitled, "The Real Reason Dinosaurs
a cartoon quite a
Became Extinct." The drawing involved a small clique of dinosaurs hanging out
together and smoking cigarettes.
That cartoon stayed in my sketchbook for almost a year until, pressed for
ideas one week, I dug it out and submitted it for publication. And, lo and behold,
itbecame one of the most popular cartoons I've ever drawn. Obviously, if I'd had
any idea of its potential impact, I never would have sat on it for as long as I did.
The following and final section of this book, however, does not include the
cartoon just described-nor any cartoon from The Far Side based simply on its
known popularity, which would turn this into a sort of "Hit Parade" of weird
humor.
Simply put, the following cartoons are among my own personal favorites.
They're the ones that I feel best reflect something about my own attitude toward
history, music, literature, art, religion, and science. (Yeah, sure they do.) I've
rarely laughed out loud at the things I've drawn (I'm a little too close to the "joke"
to ever be surprised), but these are the cartoons that at least made me smile
inwardly. (I might mention that some favorites are in the main body of the book
and are not repeated here.)
A final note: I contemplated making this last section a collection of what I
consider the lousiest cartoons I've ever drawn, but space was limited.
187
1983
"You meathead! Now watch! . . . The rabbit goes through the "Aha! As I always suspected! ... I better not ever catch you
hole, around the tree five or six times ..." drinking right from the bottle again!"
^^4^^-kw^"
A^'
v*^^
W/&*
"Drive, George, drive! This ones got a coat hanger! "It's this new boyfriend, dear. I'm just afraid one day your
. . .
father's going to up and blow him away."
188
189
Oh rr\y God, Professor-
"Zi'iqyns! tyhere'i my
body?
tyhtfthqt/e youdonz wt+h my
I b ody ? Aaaaaaaa&a<?a/-.
1988
Oo
a % » * •
& ©o
"OK, sir, would you like inferno or non-inferno? . . Professor Gallagher and his controversial technique of
Ha! Just kidding. It's all inferno, of course — I just get simultaneously confronting the fear of heights,
a kick out of saying that." snakes, and the dark.
190
(jJyULLiiA, jZÛAAS^dS
+tMJ*r>A ;
" 'This dangerous viper, known for its peculiar habit of "Well, you can just rebuild the fort later, Harold Phyllis and
. . .
tenaciously hanging from one's nose, is vividly colored/. Oo!

. .
Shirley are coming over and I'll need the cushions."
Murray! Look! . Here's a picture
. . of it!"
191
I
mrum
Eventually, Stevie looked up: His mother was nowhere in sight, Another unsubstantiated photograph of the Loch Ness
and this was certainly no longer the toy department. monster (taken by Reuben Hicks, 5/24/84, Chicago).
192
193
"Listen out there! We're George and Harriet Miller! We just The townsfolk stopped and stared; they didn't know the tall
all
dropped in on the pigs for coffee! We're coming out! . . stranger who rode calmly through their midst, but they did
We don't want trouble!" know the reign of terror had ended.
194
195
f?
"Hold it right there, Doreen!

. . "Details are still sketchy, but we think the name of the bird
Leave if you must! —but the dog stays? sucked into the jet's engines was Harold Meeker."
196
197
"My next guest, on the monitor behind me, is an organized "Listen — just take one of our brochures and see what we're
crime informant. To protect his identity, we've placed him in a all about. ... In the meantime, you may wish to ask yourself,
darkened studio — so let's go to him now." 'Am I a happy cow?'"
198
1988
^2Vz^r?t^c {/JdJAJL r/ÔsmJLG&rnj&rifc
"Don't him, George. He didn't catch it

listen to . the stupid
. .
"Ha! Ain't a rattler, Jake. You got one of them maraca players
thing swerved to miss him and ran into a tree." —
down your bag and he's probably more scared than you."
199
Parakeet furniture The Great Nerd Drive of '76
'Now go to sleep, Kevin — or once again have to knock

I'll "I'm leaving you, Frank, because you're a shiftless, low-down,
the Floating Head of Death." good-for-nothing imbecile and, might I finally add, you have
three times and summon . . .
the head of a chicken."
200
Testing whether or not animals "kiss
201
JjV i Y i Yt i
•
1 1 1
-
:>';>-.::
ACCOUNTING- -1
P CITY
CLERK
u
*+
1 DRU&
.3
REHAB-
POISON
<-
CONTftOI
PUBUC ,-
WORK5---3
:•:::•::
•iSSSS
¥:W:vX :
: :
;
:
: : :
: : :
x *
:
1986
'Second floor, please." 'It's the call of the wild."
"Quit complaining and eat it! Number one, chicken soup is

. . . "And so you just threw everything together? . . . Mathews,
flu — and number two, it's nobody we know."
"
good for the a posse is something you have to organize.
202
203
"Let's see — mosquitos, gnats, flies, ants. . . . What the? "Now wait just a minute here. How are we supposed
. . . to
Those jerks! We didn't order stink bugs on this thing!' know you're the real Angel of Death?"
204
The Lone Ranger, long since retired, makes an unpleasant discovery.
205
"Stimulus, response! Stimulus, response! "Well, let's see — so far I've got rhythm, I've got music
Don't you ever think?" actually, who could ask for anything more?"
Impolite as they were, the other bears could never help staring On Oct. 23, 1927, three days after its invention,
at Larry's enormous deer gut. the first rubber band is tested.
206
1985 III!!!'
*ttt?itfr~
"You wanna have some fun, Fred? Watch. . . "One more thing, young man. You get my daughter home
Growling and bristling, I'm gonna stand in front of the before sunrise — I want you coming back here with a
don't
closet door and just stare." pile of dried bones."
207
"Now just hold your horses, everyone. . Lets let it run for a
. . Farmer Brown froze in his tracks; the cows stared wide-eyed
minute or so and see if it gets any colder." back at him. Somewhere, off in the distance, a dog barked.
208
B^^^^^ _^ ^N^
£ • '
4/*^^-*^ '
1
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-« -
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-» *
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| vîisL--^^ M J$
£^^^H£0iu^MS^^^v^
K 1IH
OBJECTS IN MIRROR ARE ife^HJ
CLOSER THAN THEY APPEAR/ «aP5*
X
=7
If
/
/
/^p
1
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^.^-^--^z-'-^^1 - — ~~"~ __ _ ^ H
209
,ji3»tae»._
1986
How Nature says, "Do not touch." Primitive spelling bees
"Hold it young lady! Before you go out, you take off

right there, "When I got home, Harold's coat and hat were gone, his worries
some of that makeup and wash off that gallon of pheromones!" were on the doorstep, and Gladys Mitchell, my neighbor, says
she saw him heading west on the sunny side of the street."
210
'For crying out loud, I was hibernating] . . . Don't you guys "Iasked you a question, buddy....
ever take a pulse?" What's the square root of 5,248?"
211
1987
/-/elh.-.X'^ a big, -fat
Siamese ua'M a broKeh ley ard ,
f)o teeiU ar\c/ 1'rr\ Sitting her^

'
on rr\y frdt\tporch no place ~k
w'fa
.
run or WAe...)ir\ broad dayl]^-
Only they know the difference. Dial-a-Cat
t$<A*S<-4»—
r i j 1 1 ii m i i i i i i
. . . .:. : : \
. .
iV i i
'
i i '.'.V i VV
i
1984
"Listen. We may be young, but we're in love and we're getting 'Take another memo, Miss Wilkens ... I want to see all reptile
married — I'll just work until Jerry pupates." personnel in my office first thing tomorrow morning!"
212
Rusty makes his move.
213
1984 eîôi
Laboratory peer pressure "You know, we're just not reaching that guy."
The conversation had been brisk and pleasant when, suddenly The anthropologist's dream: A beautiful woman in one hand,
and simultaneously everyone just got dog tired. the fossilized skull of a Homo habilus in the other.
214
1988
iXfrtcAJCodM^' dc£<r*JL
215
Welcome to heaven-
Here's your harp
t%^
W*n?<***!!*K*>!<*!*W???!*5S!?!*f&. _^______^_p.^^^^_
"Bobby, jiggle Grandpa's rat so it looks alive, please "Hey! You! . . . Yeah, that's right! I'm talkin' to you\"
216
At the rubber man factory
217
1988
.but the Secretary of State declined

to comment on the latest round of 1a//rs...
fheA-1 Life Raft Co. issued
./tnd today
a statement recalling Soooo of ;is small
rubber boats due to defective g/u<? used
their manufacture, causing the boats to _
/'/i
\
lose air and gradually Sin'K over a Matter
of a few days-.. «<
And now let's 50 to Lou Jackson
-for what's happening in sports.
o^» Û >^
"Oh hey! I just love these things! . . . Crunchy on the outside and
a chewy center!"
Suddenly, everything froze. Only the buzzing of the tsetse flies "Think about it, Ed. . . . the class Insecta contains 26 orders,
could be heard. The crackling grass wasn't Cummings almost 1,000 families, and over 750,000 described species —
returning to camp after all, but an animal but I can't shake the feeling we're all just a bunch of bugs."
who didn't like to be surprised.
218
1988
J£fo~n4&XsiZ&y
-l-j II M I MI 'l l
1983
"Whoa! Thai was a good one! Try it, Hobbs— just poke his Dang! . . . Who ate the middle out of the daddy longlegs?"
brain right where my finger is."
219
Dinner time for the young Wright brothers Piglet practical jokes
moving in next door. Danny, you just

"If there Ye monsters "I don't know what you're insinuating, Jane, but I haven't seen
ignore them. The more you believe in them, the more they'll your Harold all day— besides, surely you know I would only
try to get you." devour my awn husband!"
220
Aerobics in hell
221
^
Left to right: Old Man Winter, River, and Higgins Before paper and scissors
"And now, Randy, by use of song, the male sparrow will stake "Let's move it, folks nothing to see here it's all over
. . . . . .
out his territory ... an instinct common in the lower animals." move it along, folks let's go, let's go ...
. . .
222
pinvr&r
223
1986
"A few cattle aregoing to stray off in the morning, The operation was a success: Later, the duck, with his new
and tomorrow night a stampede is planned around midnight. human brain, went on to become the leader of a great flock.
Look, I gotta get back. Remember, when we reach Santa Fe,
. . . Irwin, however, was ostracized by his friends and family and
I ain't slaughtered." eventually just wandered south.
224
"And that's the hand that fed me."
225
"I wouldn't do that, mister . . "Of course, long before you mature, most of you will be eaten."
Old Zeek's liable to fire that sucker up.
1987 Zs?*~o*»~-.
"What did I say, Alex? Every time we invite the Zombies

. . . "Uh-oh, Danny. Sounds like the monster in the basement has
over, we all end up just sitting around staring at each other." heard you crying again. Let's be reaaaal quiet and
. . .
hope he goes away."
226
With their parents away, the young dragons would stay up late "Egad! It's Professor DeArmond — the
epitome
lighting their sneezes. of evil amongst butterfly collectors!"
227
"There goes Williams again . . . trying to win support for his "Good heavens — just look at you! You've been down at the
Little Bang theory." Fergusons' porch light, haven't you?"
When a body meets a body comin' through the rye . . 'Relax, Jerry! ... He probably didn't know you were an
elephant when he told that last joke!"
228
229
1983
Wh at We say to dogs
WhSt they hesr
1986 1984
e££jCv4s0y*-*'
"I hear 'em! . . . Gee, there must be a hundred of the little guys "You know what I'm sayin'? Me, for example.
. . . I couldn't work
squirmin' around in there!" in some stuffy little office ... the outdoors just calls to me."
230
"And murderer is
the . the butierl Yes, the butler
. . .who, I'm
. .
Onward they pushed, through the thick, steamy jungle,
convinced, first gored the Colonel to death before trampling separately ruing the witch doctor's parting words: "Before you
him to smithereens." leave this valley, each of you will be wearing a duck."
231
1982
i
w^-w..-.-.w.--.^.-. ...,. ,
Great moments in evolution "Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full."
'Harold!The dogs trying to blow up the house again! "For crying out loud, Warren. . Can't you just beat
. .
Catch him in the act or he'll never learn." your chest like everyone else?"
232
"And here we are last summer off the coast of . . . Helen, is this Hawaii or Florida?"
233
g^»«»-yv_
1988
Cartoon readings The squid family on vacation
"Do I like it? Do I like it? Dang it, Thelma, you know
. . . Suddenly, through forces not yet fully understood, Darren
my feelings on barbed wire." Belsky's apartment became the center of a new black hole.
234
235
Ornithology 101 field trips "Your room is right in here, Maestro."
1987
UtNtKHL
r
STORE
"You know, Sid, I bananas ... I mean, I know that's

really like "Something up, Jed. That's Ben Potter's horse, all right, but
. . .
not profound or nothin'. Heck! We all do

. . . but for me, I
. . . ain't that Henry Morgan's chicken ridin' him?"
think it goes much more beyond that."
236
"Well, the Parkers are dead. . . . You had to encourage them to take thirds, didn't you?"
237
1985 S&
'Oârr^s
PiifiiliB
ftr
SSI /\^n
nH
fcvf*, \ Xf ^v~ V1
'•\tm"\\t\mu
Creationism explained. At the popular dog film, Man Throwing Sticks
"Now watch this. He'll keep that chicken right there until I say "Wonderful! Just wonderful! ... So much for instilling them
OK. . . . You wanna say OK, Ernie?" with a sense of awe."
238
'Andrew! So that's where you've been! And good heavens! "Just stay in the cab, Vern . .
There's my old hairbrush, too!" maybe that bear's hurt and maybe he ain't."
239
^Zfaoirri
1983
KEEF OUT
RADIOACTIVE hWK
O
*So. Foster! That's how you want it, huh? . . . Then take this\" "Oh, Ginger — you look absolutely stunning . . . and whatever
you rolled in sure does stink."
240
241
1
1986
; ; :::;:;' : : : : n
;-""
DINER
wmwHW! • Mill I.IJ.I.
*"*
.rf1-"Vi"
Brmns,i
,, NO
^Service
V^v»^-
1985
^
"Notice all the computations, theoretical scribblings, and lab "And see this ring right here, Jimmy? . . . That's another time
equipment, Norm. . Yes, curiosity killed these cats."
. . when the old fellow miraculously survived some big forest fire."
242
243
—
Mti^^^MM*^^^^
1988
Y3! V.»c; Bros.
Cockroach farm
"Hours of retoUvng
"Now remember, Cory, show us that you can take "Well, I Wednesday, three yesterday, and two more
laid four
good care of these little fellows and maybe next year today ... of course, George keeps saying we shouldn't count
we'll get you that puppy." them until they hatch."
244
The Arnolds feign death until the Wagners, sensing awkwardness, are compelled to leave.
245
V^*"" \^^-
W»
VSss- V"
U^--
Final page of the Medical Boards

At the Old Spiders' Home
-" --"ii
"X" wonder if she knows

lenst.. Should X cai\
her? Maybe she doesn'-h
ever) know X ex/st? Well
maybe she does.,. Xil call
her No, w&t.'.-Z'm not sure:
if she Knows X ex/'5f... £?/#/
The elephant's nightmare Same planet, different worlds
246
"Here's the last entry in Carlson's journal: 'Having won their In the early days, living in their squalid apartment, all three
confidence, tomorrow I shall test the humor of these giant but shared dreams of success. In the end, however, Bob the Spoon
gentle primates with a simple joy-buzzer handshake."' and Ernie the Fork wound up in an old silverware drawer, and
only Mac went on to fame and fortune.
247
Nonsinging canaries have to take wood shop. A lucky night for Goldy
Carl shoves Roger, Roger shoves Carl, and tempers rise. Killer bees are generally described as starting out
as larvae delinquents.
248
Cowjoyrides
249
1986 «^g> < <•• *
qqoq
Û O/EREATERS
7^ ANONYMOUS
"Well, this shouldn't last too long." Group photo disasters
"I've got it, too, Omar. ... a strange feeling like we've just been "Ha ha ha, Biff. Guess what? After we go to the drugstore and
going in circles." the post office, I'm going to the vet's to get tutored."
250
.;>*
Unwittingly, Palmer stepped out of the jungle and into 'Hey, Norton! . . . Ain't that your dog attackin' the president?"
headhunter folklore forever.
251
ill ii. i . i .i. i .w. i
.
' .lfi
1987
IT CAME
Anthro horror films Well, I'll be! Eggbeater must have missed that one."
"Honey, the Merrimonts are here. They'd like to . . . come down "The boss wants his money, see? Or next time it won't be just
and see your ape-man project." your living room we rearrange."
252
School for the Mechanically Declined
253
r*
"WW!WWiwi!i!i!
zzz
n
^HULTZ3B0S.
v BUCk & £tfr
1 1 ! i hi in in 1
As Harriet turned the page, a scream escaped her lips: There "OK, this time Rex and Zeke will be the wolves,
was Donald — his strange disappearance no longer a mystery. Fifi and Muffin will be the coyotes, and . Listen!
. . . .
Here comes the deer!"
254
255
Buddy's dreams Amoeba porn flicks
With a reverberating crash, Lulu's adventure on the tractor The committee to decide whether spawning
had come to an abrupt end. should be taught in school.
256
ill
—+- - —m^^m
"Bummer of a birthmark, Hal."
257
yfruxr*, 1981 0-
m tiiW','
1
,,;.
<K'/
i/%
Don't encourage him, Sylvia." "I'm afraid you've got cows, Mr. Farnsworth."
Through patience and training, Professor Carmichael "It's Bob, all but look at those vacuous eyes, that stupid
right ...
believed he was one of the few scientists who could freely visit grin on his face —
he's been domesticated, I tell you."
the Wakendas.
258
"Whoa! Smells like a French primate house in here." 'Go back to sleep, Chuck. You're just havin' a nightmare
— of course, we are still in hell."
259
'Say . . . now there 's a little hat!" Early vegetarians returning from the kill
Knowing how it could change the of canines even, where.

lives "Well, that cat's doing it again. Keeping that poor thing alive
the dog scientists struggled diligently to understand the just to play with it awhile."
Doorknob Principle.
260
At the Vincent van Gogh School of Art
261
When potato salad goes bad Where "minute" steaks come from
50.000 B.C.: Gak Eisenberg invents the first and last "Lunch is ready, Lawrence, and . . . what? You're still a fly?"
silent mammoth whistle.
262
INSECT
PH0T06RAPH
EXHIBIT
"I hate this place Deer grandmothers
"Well, there goes again

it and we just
. . . sit here "Listen! The authorities are helpless! If the city's to be saved,
without opposable thumbs." I'm afraid it's up to us! This is our hour!"
264
"I tell you, a crib is just plain worthless — what we need around here is a good cardboard box."
265
"Say, Will — why don't you pull that thing out and play us a tune?
266
"The white whale! The whiiiiiiite wh ... No, no ... My mistake! "Do what you will to me, but I'll never talk' . .
... A black whale! A regular blaaaaaaack whale!" Never! And, after me, there'll come others — and others
and others! ... Ha ha ha!"
267
"Uh-oh." Butterflies from the wrong side of the meadow
'Kemosabe! . . . The music's starting! The music's starting!" "OK, let's see. . . . That's a curse on you, a curse on you,
and a curse on you."
268
"So, Raymond . . . Linda tells us you work in the security division of an automobile wreckage site."
269
"Oh boy! . . . It's dog food again!" Early microbiologists
rinifmruirmmm
"Watch out for that tree, you idiot! And now you're on the
. . . "Well, we're lost... and probably just a matter of time
it's
wrong side of the road. Criminy! You're driving like you've before someone decides to shoot us."
been pithed or something."
270
"Yeah, yeah, buddy, I've heard it all before: You've just "Wendell . . . I'm not content.
metamorphosed and you've got 24 hours to find a mate
and breed before you die. . . . Well, get lost!"
271
1983
^V^
ôr>. wz?m%?>.
~o(aô^>\
Another great moment in evolution Nerds in hell
Trying to calm the herd, Jake himself was suddenly awestruck 'No, they're not real exciting pets — mostly they just lie around
—
by the image of beauty and unbridled fury on the cliff above and wait to be fed — although a couple years ago Charles
Pink Shadow had returned. tried teachin him to take a cookie from his mouth."
272
1986
/aK,fyyak yak yak!-

YaKify yak yak yak! .
273
1987
's yours ,ChacK," Leo;

You vwi'W eat well tK's .summer,.
but ha«f t'mes axe ah&2ct...You will
y\oV mate at al\ +Ws ye^c
possibly "Hê next--- Poacher*
Tiaurt? bus 7 kx youv future^,
— mxm
w.UJ.uu.i. IvV
*. *» •*
i WmX 1
.
1
mHOXO!
Jazz at the Wool Club Animal horoscopes
&te>*r>,
"Oh, good heavens, no, Gladys —

not for me. ... I ate my young "You call that mowin' the lawn? . .
just an hour ago." Bad dog! ... No biscuit! Bad dog!"

. . .
274
275
^^2^^^-
When ornithologists are mutually attracted Early Man
"Let's see ... no orange ... no root beer ... no Fudgsicles . . . Well, "Sony to bother you, sir, but there's another salesman out here
for crying-out-loud! . . . Am I out of everything?" you want me to tell him to go to heaven?"
276
"So! Planning on roaming the neighborhood with some of your buddies today?"
277
i
How cow documentaries are made 'Anthropologists! Anthropologists!"
1983
\i
in y^'
1 i*
0b
"Why. yes ... we do have two children Suddenly amidst all the confusion.
who won't eat their \e2etables." Fifi seized the controls and saved the day.
278
1988
TT
"
1986
"Nik! The fireflies across the street "Excuse me, Harold, while I go slip
I think they're mooning us!" into something more comfortable."
279
'If we pull this off, we'll eat like kings." "The fool! . . . He's on the keyboard!"
'Looks like the bank's been hit again. Well, no hurry — we'll "Hey! That's milk! And you said you were all empty,
take the big horse." you stinkin' liar!"
280
Washington crossing the street
281
1987 1986
.anel then J *** Wrllaur
o AaaaiLookaxT)
qo arourd to the back
bam
got
carrying this shovel W
wild Joo/rm his eyesohJhrs
this
o-f the
he's everyone!
"X^'s Q covershp!
S.
)
like real nerws anj fhen 1 ce > ^'

he's ir/in<>ib bur/ Piis loiyptofix
bay
which d"first X 7%ure Jsjustfull or*
manure but-then X start to \wnder-
what ih* hey Is S°' nJ ° h anc/ ~tn
,
^ i
Mr. Ed spills his guts. Life on a microscope slide
Luposlipaphobia: The fear of being pursued by timber wolves "According to the map, this should be the place — but it sure
around a kitchen table while wearing socks don't look right to me. . . . Well, we're supposed to die around
on a newly waxed floor. here somewhere.
282
1988
\Jb Hul qûdCe/' ~Hol j^za!*- cûm. £e/o±iL t

-fhe. vvt&x^z- £*--
j^rrulrû^L <***** A***C

-]f&*4-
fUs^ Z*£*s**C — Mrt C^Jaj(£aMm^
283
"Hey, Johnny! This lady wants to know the difference Cornered by the street ducks, Phil wasn't exactly sure
in all these fertilizers!" what to do — and then he remembered his 12-gauge.
284
What really happened to Elvis
285
1982 ^[<vuxrr>
"Ernie! Look what you're doing — take those shoes off!" "All right! All right! I confess! I did it! Yes! That's right! The
cow! Ha ha ha! And I feel great!"
"Ah, yes, Mr. Frischberg, I thought you'd come ... but which of Late and without permission, Reuben would often
at night,
us is the real duck, Mr. Frischberg, and not just an illusion?" enter the nursery and conduct experiments in static electricity.
286
"Aha! The murderer's footprints! 'Course, we all leave tracks like this."
287
"OK, OK, OK . . . Everyone just calm down and we'll try this thing one more time."
288
A
w A
r a A A
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« A
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•
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. ^. <
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fit
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A
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Mrs. Ferguson's first-grade class, 1957 (author: middle row, second from right).
Front cover photo by Chip Clark/Ernie Block
Andrews and McMeel

Universal Press Syndicate
A Universal Press Syndicate Company
in U.S.A. Kansas City • New York 18510 1
ISBN D-fl3bE-lflSl-S

The PreHistory of The Far Side - A 10th Anniversary (Art Cartoon Ebook)

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m

The Far Side

Hound of The Far Side

iby trary JLairsoe

Andrews and McMeel

ISBN: 0-8362-1861-2 (hd)

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 89-84815 (hd)

Cartoons on pages 26 and 27 copyright ©1976 by Pacific Northwest

Comedy is when you walk into an

Part 1: Origin of the Species 11

The Fossil Record 13

Sketchbook Sampler 100

Part 3: Mutations 119

Mistakes (Mine and Theirs) 121

Subtle Things 134

Part 4: Stimulus-Response 153

Public Response 155

Rejected Cartoons 172

Part 5: The Exhibit 185

Yes... They're qu»Ve Strange durfng "the.

Immediately, I was surrounded by angels singing, "You looooove cartooning, you

X yst c\car&\.-. s & don't go

"Egad! What a hideous creature!'

': e been t p o t^ecl

yxi give me no cKoice.

Coars-e. of man'. X ca\\ \\ — V\axnmcr aryd CVvseW.

the steak sandwich."

"Bring back his ear. '"Last one out's a rotten egg!"

Say, FraivK. You don't happen "to s\ecp

By God, Bavr\a.by-' Movv tWere. aocs one. bia p'lqeorv'"

portfolio or to make arrangements for someone to forward it home. Either way, I

(Insert theme song from Rocky here.)

fccenx *^ c^ck^ out.. . \>vd? vY\a^£< T

/decided the caption on the first draft was just too

The first version of this (upper) seemed just a tad

/ have absolutely no idea what the little doodle above

What kind of a sordid, bizarre past a scientist and some

enjoyed the drama in suggesting that, once again, their

Above is my first version

grubs with me."

about mountain men and the wild

Nttd ik&ks ^WftyS Wh 4V projfcfo,

Sometimes I feel rough sketches I do of certain

/ started thinking about faith healers one day and how

The idea came in up above and came out on the bottom

My brother once woke up screaming in the middle of

The monster snorkel: Allows your child to breathe comfortably

Originally, the title I intended for this cartoon was,

exactly how the animal was snuffed—seconds before he

A friend and I were walking across the zoo grounds one

/ got luckyon this one. The first version seemed to be

'What kind of fools are they?'

"Nice threads" led to this cartoon. Or maybe it didn't.

Apparently this was a little if dogs drove or commuted to

J^//u2*_ fl^Sia-^tr To- UTdV^

/ /?ave «o uppermost sketch means. In

fact, I can't say for sure if these cartoons were part of

Have you made a wish?"

t^slfih tf*<^ 5ok\

of prefer the first sketch I made of this, but,

/r hyzsa?'? difficult to go from the sketch above to the

final version. After all, I believe this is true.

How birds see the world.

Q?us ty> 4ktW«<* G^A" T&>d

A^^T Act/ J<fi4 tr&UfJ2or 4cuca